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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

I've heard of people going from a bootcamp course straight into Google and optimizing 100% for the career path. They make embarrassingly more than I do, have been programming for a scant few years, and I couldn't care less.

I've been programming for most of my life. I've poured hours into learning 6502, BASIC, 8086, C, C++, Perl, Python, Javascript, Common Lisp, Haskell... to say nothing of physics, linear algebra, geometry, graphics, logic, type theory, abstract algebra, category theory, information theory, databases, networking, compilers, operating systems, interactive theorem provers, distributed systems, etc. I've never even been to university or college and I've been doing this for nearly twenty years professionally.

Do it because you like it, because it means something to you. Keep being you and doing what you think is important and useful.

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To be clear, courses such as "category theory" and abstract algebra are not required to be a good engineer.

100% agree. Category theory is simply practical and something I came across through a combination of Haskell and Group theory.

I'm not trying to shame bootcamp grads or make any judgements about their skills if that's what you're implying. I think the free market is free to decide what they're willing to pay and we should treat it as such and not be upset if someone with a few months of experience with programming lands a job making more than we do.

My point was that your fiercest competition is with yourself. And CS is a valid career path with a lot of interesting options if you stick it out for the long race.

Would you be open to having a video chat about these things? I have a distant appreciation but not a full grasp of many things you mentioned and would love some insights.

Me too! I would love to hear more about your experience.

Go to an engineering school and ask if calculus is required to be a good engineer ;-) You can be a programmer without a lot of math skills. You can do a good job in a number of different areas. You can be promoted and lead other programmers. You can write a lot of good code.

However, there are a lot of areas where knowing linear algebra will help you enormously. Many people who don't know linear algebra often don't see the problem because they will never choose a solution that will require it. They often don't know enough about it to realise that a solution exists and is potentially better than the solution they are reaching for.

Similarly, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen abject failures because the people involved did not understand statistics. In fact, if you only choose one math related area to learn about as a programmer, I highly recommend choosing statistics (which will unfortunately require calculus to understand well). Again, people who do not understand statistics often fail without realising that they are failing -- because they don't understand the statistics ;-)

I can make a similar remark for combinatorics and a variety of other mathematical disciplines. For a very cool job I once had to map animations onto a non-euclidean surface. Sure, I don't have to think much about math in my every day work wrestling with a legacy Rails system but I'm not sure I would want to define my entire career as doing that.

I would recommend that any programmer who wants to be a good programmer and to work in a variety of interesting fields to study math. Universities hardly have a monopoly on math. There are many good books and many internet resources to help you. You don't have to do it, but it will help you if you do.

The good news is that linear algebra is one of the easiest forms of algebras out there to learn.

> They make embarrassingly more than I do, have been programming for a scant few years, and I couldn't care less.

I think the bigger question is, with programming being made more common to the public (aka being taught in elementary school), will the supply/demand ratio that makes US development a six figure job go away with the influx of "new would-be coders"?

Time will tell. I think there will always be a market for people who can solve problems.

Programming may become a lot like maths in that it’s mainly used by other disciplines to get things done. Learning something other than programming itself will always be an asset.

Unlikely, it will just eliminate the "easy" jobs. Just look at writing, mass literacy surely eliminated many jobs but lawyers are still quite well compensated. Another area is mathematics with actuaries.

Democratization of computing will lead to greater stratification of programming jobs. The "Excel Programmer" won't exist being supplanted by the "Office Drone" whereas the "Distributed Systems Engineer" (or whatever) will keep on going.

Ops is getting commoditized through no-code/IaaS-turnkey solutions -- not there yet but I can see what is hard now, becoming easy for 80% of a business needs.

You dont hear big stories from the ones who tried this and crash burned.

That is some amazing experience you have that no bootcamp can ever hope to teach. Thanks!

Do you recommend any books or lessons online to learn the math you mentioned? Trying to break into it but right now I'm only in Algebra II (MAT 111) in HS so a lot of stuff I look at requires more prior knowledge than I have.

Well I'm not a mathematician so I'm not sure my advice is going to be useful.

The standard pedagogy is algebra then calculus by the end of HS. For me it was learning to program computers by way of making video games that solidified my understanding of HS level geometry, trig, and calculus. That was so long ago though that I don't really have any recommendations for current courses or books to go that route. I would recommend learning enough Javascript or something to get a canvas up in your browser and start making boxes move around, accelerate, rotate, follow your mouse, etc. It doesn't have to be anything sophisticated but it can teach you a lot.

If you're eager and enjoy a challenge I'd say my one regret was not learning how to construct my own proofs until much later on. Learning how to apply maths to solve problems is a lot of fun but learning how to think abstractly and make your own arguments is much more satisfying. There's a great book that doesn't require too much more than HS level math to understand which starts to make this connection called, Introduction To Graph Theory [0] and it's one of my all-time favorites.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Graph-Theory-Dover-Mathe...

How can you not care for people working in the top tech while probably not even knowing half of what you have learned?

Would you say the same thing when you would be another field of work; like medicine maybe?

I'm not the OP but generally I don't attach that much importance to my job. I'm very lucky to (both now and historically) have great colleagues working on interesting problems.

But in terms of 'jealousy' for those who earn more? Quite the opposite. There are plenty of companies I'd rather top myself than work for.

I mean - honestly - most people that work in computers don't work for FAANG, or even a FAANG adjacent corporation. I like job stability (and with my health issues, job stability and good health benefits are always at the top of my priority list), so most of FAANG (and many start-ups) are lower on my priority list; I know I could almost double my income moving out of higher ed. but that comes with different costs and benefits.

You're treating this like monetary value is the only motivator for people. Let's pick on medicine; a general practitioner consistently makes less money, but they tend to have greater, more regular contact with their patients, which may be a strong motivator for them over becoming a surgeon for more money. And to boot, the surgeon is more specialized, so they have simultaneously learned less than the Gen Practitioner, but more specificity within their selected specialization. This is similar to boot camps, that provide a very narrow skillset that give someone the best chance of getting hired into that very narrow position type; where as, someone like the OP and I are happy with our broader knowledge that gives us different benefits.

And probably most importantly, what do I care that someone else has optimized their job path for monetary gain. I could assign 5 minute increments to worrying about each person and still not make it through all the idiots that are employed in the tech industry in my lifetime.

I focus on myself. Am I better than I was yesterday? Three years ago? Good. Keep going.

We're not like doctors. There is no capital-P professional guild setting the bar for practitioners of software engineering. There are engineering guilds that recognize software development as a discipline that will accredit you if you meet their requirements and pay their dues. However it's often not mandatory for you to be accredited in order to practice software engineering. And it's not required that a company developing software employ a professional software engineer in order to conduct business. So hardly anyone seeks out accreditation.

In a free market you get companies like Google that need a large volume of people trained with vocational skills to churn out code in the various frameworks and tools. Doesn't bother me any.

I like to work on problems that are interesting and make the world a better place. You can't always do that at a Google or Netflix.

Curious, and being serious here, what problems are you working on and how do you make the world a better place?

At my present day job I make software for factories. My team and I make people's jobs safer, keep machines running longer, and have improved food/drug manufacturing safety operations.

On my evenings and weekends, when I'm not unwinding, I'm presently working on Haskell libraries for type-directed data migrations, extending the community fork of Lean to add FFI support, and working on a course in abstract algebra.

Making the world a better place is pretty easy and can start with small things. I like visiting some of our customer factories and meeting the people who use our software. It makes my day to hear their feedback and know that it's making a difference for them.

It's not a competition. If you can do what you enjoy then that can be very rewarding in and of itself.

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