Your grandfather is Gerald Weinberg? His books have been a big influence on me and I recommend them to lots of people!
However, most likely indrora's grandfather was someone else. First, Jerry Weinberg has a Ph.D.; that's a little beyond 8th grade. I also remember hearing him talk about majoring in physics as an undergrad because computer science didn't exist yet. And I've never heard of him working on Unix. He was an IBM guy after all.
I doubt that Weinberg ever objected to using advanced math to solve technical problems, including programming problems, when appropriate. What he has objected to is complex models and metrics that purport to quantify human behavior when in reality they're not measuring anything significant. Weinberg regards this as a form of escapism (my word not his), a way of hiding behind technicality to avoid facing human situations. He wrote a whole book, in fact, called First Order Measurement arguing that simple measurements -- including just plain personal observation -- are the best way to monitor complex systems, such as a software project.
Weinberg was a great humanizer of the software industry. You can see his influence on Agile (the good parts, not the slick parts, which I heard him denounce as early as 2004). I think it took courage for him to talk about Virginia Satir in software circles - or would have, if software people had any idea what Satir did.
As for math, it was one of my majors as an undergraduate, and I am a member of Pi Mu Epsilon, and have published a number of mathematical papers, though not recently.
But, I'm a hacker at heart, always have been, always will be. I use math only when it's helpful to solve problems. That's true of any tool I use. Why? Because the higher the math or esoteric the tool, the more you diminish the number of other people who can understand what you're doing.
Indeed, that's why I'm now writing fiction that helps people grasp a few mathematical and software concepts. For instance, my mystery novel, "Freshman Murders," has a team of math geniuses as the "detective." And I still write techie stuff, when I have something to say.
- Gerald M. Weinberg <http://www.geraldmweinberg.com>;