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Comment by dougSF70 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but. Most real world engineers could also be software engineers too. I studied Mechanical Engineering and had to learn Fortran and Pascal as part of my undergrad. What I find strange is that some of the best software engineers are not as strong at Math as you would expect. Of course there are exceptions (and no doubt they are all here on HN!). So while real world engineers can cross the divide to become software engineers, the reverse is not the case in a lot of instances.

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The best software engineers I have ever worked with have come from disciplines with different math focus: math, physics, physical engineering fields (mechanical, civil, etc.). Discrete math, the kind employed in CS curricula, is good for the theoretical discipline but in the vast majority of practical cases it’s sufficient to get by with a kind of CRC cheat sheet of algorithms and their performance characteristics, with corresponding language specific library implementations that someone from CS built.

Although it does help to actually learn the underlying theory, too: makes one just that much more capable

> What I find strange is that some of the best software engineers are not as strong at Math as you would expect.

I actually trained to be a commercial pilot prior to becoming a software engineer and I suck at math, which people would expect is extremely important in both fields.

Granted, in college I still had to get through advanced aerodynamics courses and stuff like that, but I studied just enough to pass those. In software engineering, I use almost zero math and I've been doing this now for decades.

Exactly, a lot of what I do is creating software, scripts, etc. to help with or partially automate the design process. Designing a physical object using modern CAD tools is akin to creating a giant interconnected script that generates geometry. Much of it can be, and needs to be automated to get it all done.

Discrete math is still math. A software engineer may not be able to do a Laplace transform without reaching for a book but your typical traditional engineer won't do well with data structure and algorithm questions without training either.

I think it’s hard to switch jobs in all cases and I doubt any universal rule applies. Software engineering is more than writing Pascal. It’s like saying you can be a mechanical engineer because you learned physics in college.

disagree, at a base level almost all engineering is systems analysis. Understanding a system of queues is not massively different from a system of forces or a system of chemical reactions in terms of what sort of thinking it takes.

Coding and using coding tools is a bump in the road and then eventually that all fades into the background and you’re thinking just in terms of systems again.

That's wrong. Coding and using code is a skill in itself.

Forget math, I shocked myself with wet fingers on a light switch when I was like 8, and have been afraid of electricity ever since.

I am generally quite good at Discrete Math

I am terrible at Linear Algebra and Calculus.

I strongly dislike (and am terrible at) linear algebra and probability theory. Calculus seems fun though. And we all probably use Boolean algebra daily at our jobs, if unintentionally.

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