What I do.

[bunn]

That meme got me thinking about the differences between what I do, and perceptions of what I do.

This quiz asks you fairly bluntly if you like Sums. I said 'no' (as I hate sums and have a go-slow on that part of my brain that deals with numbers) so I didn't get any of the computery type jobs suggested, (apart from designer, which is really Drawing, and doesn't count).

Website development and programming type stuff is percieved as a fairly sum-based discipline, which I don't think it is necessarily, or not the kind I do, anyway.

I think of it more as working out what people want, and how it might be easiest for them to get / do it, then explaining how to do it to computers using their language. Well, not their language, exactly, but a language that they have learnt and so have I*. Or perhaps as a sort of training: finding the triggers for the behaviours you want the machines to perform, and doing them in the right order...

Very rarely do I need to use my rather sad -2 to Sums Skill, and when I do, it's usually on marketing analysis type stuff rather than on 'making stuff work' type stuff. Not that I am a programmer really, but I do seem to write or adapt quite a lot of stuff that certainly has that sort of programming smell about it.

* possibly this explains the odd miscommunication...

Comments

[purplecat]

Teaching both programming and mathematics for computer science it often struck me that there wasn't an obvious correlation between good programmers and good mathematicians and ability to be careful, think through chains of cause and effect and recognise abstract patterns helped with both but programming requires a lot more careful attention to detail than pen-and-paper mathematics (I rarely do maths with pen-and-paper if I can help it these days since I'm aware the computer forces me to be much more precise about what I'm doing) and the sorts of imagination required to write interesting programs seems rather different than the sorts of imagination needed to do interesting maths.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I've always viewed engineering as a blend of Art and Science. And Software Engineering (aka computer programming) as a blend of Engineering and Art: if it doesn't look good / interesting people will use something else.

I completely agree about Website development and programming type stuff is percieved as a fairly sum-based discipline, which I don't think it is necessarily. The most complicated maths that I've done in connection with programming was second-order differentials and that is in about 20 years of programming. Mostly the maths stuff is incrementing / decrementing things by one, a bit of adding up / subtracting, the occasional bit of multiplication / division and very, very occasionally powers and roots.

More usually it is working out methods and algolrithms. But most of the time it is trying to figger out why the damn thing doesn't work!

[tena524.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that programming is *rarely* about math. It seems to me more akin to translation. So, wouldn't web design be more a use of language skills, with some graphic art mixed in?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That's what it feels like to me. But there does seem to be a sort of move to direct people towards programming because they are good at Sums, rather than because they are good at languages and understanding how people think, (and good at spotting misplaced bloody semicolons and apostrophes!) Though I think people who are good at it are usually good communicators too.

Perhaps it used to be more Sums* when computers were much simpler?

Strangely, Marketing (which I am trained in, unlike programming which I just kind of drifted into) is seen as a creative, imprecise discipline, but the sort I deal with seems to involve a lot more Sums then programming does.

*as the world of mathematics is entirely dark to me, I can't be more precise than that about the sort of skills/aptitudes I mean.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it used to be more Sums when computers were much simpler?

I think you are right.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I think so too.

[purplecat]

Well I err... could get quite technical at this point about the relationship between mathematical proofs and working computer programs but I would probably merely descend into a diatribe about the slipshod attitude "real mathematicians" have towards proof.

But the short story is that all working programs are actually mathematical proofs (mostly that it is possibly to construct an answer to a particular problem). It's just that in some cases we don't yet really have the mathematics to pose the question in a formal fashion...

[tena524.livejournal.com]

The only programming courses I ever took were taught out of the Math Department at my university. Didn't involve using numbers even one little bit.(sorry, could help myself there)

Marketing to me seems like 9 parts statistical analysis to 1 part creativity, at least as it's practiced today. The popular impression of the field is misleading at best.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Accountancy - another traditionally mathematic career, that really isn't - especially auditing.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it.

Q: "What's 2+2?"

A: "I don't care, ADPT's 30. Can you sign off now? I'm supposed to be on another job."

[tena524.livejournal.com]

It's simple math,true enough, but it's only the means to the end.