I saw the below youtube video and decided to comment on it here.
Should I be afraid of computer science if I struggle with math? – CS50 Office Hours 2020
Yes and No. I am a person that was also intimidated by Math. The way that I approached this was that I wanted a career as a developer, and I felt that I would retire from my career at the age of 65. That left me with about 40+ years to work. For me, that meant that I would need to put in a few years of really hard work at college to achieve a rewarding career. When I attended university as an undergraduate, I struggled, but instead of giving up, I spent most of my free time in the school Math Lab at Queens College. The college offered free tutoring and video taped classes and loads of computational learning resources that helped me. Basically I buckled down and studied copious amounts of Math, because I knew it was a weakness for me. It was worth it.
Ironically, when I took my Masters degree in Computer Science, I didn’t have any Math classes. Now in a Masters program in Cyber Security, I’m back to more Math.
Do I use Math in my day to day job? No. But think of software development in terms cars. Most people that work on cars are mechanics. There are some however, that design and engineer new cars. They are two different jobs. So, you can write code to parse data, or you can perform operational tasks, where Math probably won’t come into play on a day to day basis; or you can write operating systems and programming languages, for which the Math skills are necessary.
Do I use math at all? Yes. I perform capacity planning and speed tests. If I were management, I’d have to provide operational performance matrix’s and uptime analysis. The Math comes in handy from time to time.
The point of all this is that Math is a factor in getting the Comp Sci degree. I wouldn’t let fear of Math hold you back from pursuing a career that you love, just work harder for it, and whether or not you use the Math on a day to day basis, you’ll find it helpful from time to time anyway.
NOTE: While didn’t actually graduate from Queens College, I did a large part of my undergraduate degree there. I ended up going back to work full-time and transferring my classes into Pace University where I finally got my degree.
