I was pretty annoyed when I got to university and figured out that math could be about proofs rather than calculation. If I had been raised with that idea of math, I would have loved it so much sooner and would probably be pretty good at it by now.
It’s a bit late for me now at 38, or at least it feels that way. I never took college math so HS-level algebra and geometry is my current level of understanding and sometimes it really hampers my programming ability.
For instance: this one teaches geometric proofs without mentioning the formalism, just letting you "unlock" the tools from a few "axiom" starter tools.
I stopped after discrete math and analysis-lite class but I wish I took more algorithm and higher level math classes to be better at my craft. It's also hard to take classes when you have competing priorities when you're 30+. I don't know your current situation but I feel like you can totally do it since you have renewed determination for learning.
It was only when I got into programming and it taught me math is actually much more than just meaningless letters and numbers that I finally came around to appreciating it. Programming taught me math is the language spoken by the universe, anything in this universe could be explained with math and it was truly a mindblowing paradigm shift.
Math education needs a complete redo from the ground up, it teaches nothing of value and only serves to mass-produce math-haters to the detriment of us all.
- Enrichment, visual, and speedy stuff to build intuition
- Proofy stuff to build rigor and reasoning ability
- Rote stuff to build arithmetic and symbolic manipulation skills
Ideally, it would be balanced this way from kindergarten to mid-undergrad. In practice, most students rotate through these.
You do not build intuition about things without having some amount of those things in your head which is memorization.