is it important to understand the mathematical equations to have a career in software engineering?

When I was getting my Associate's degree, it was originally in Computer Aided Drafting and Design. I always wanted to be a software programmer growing up, though, so it wasn't a hard discussion to talk me into switching paths. I thought going in that there would be very little math (which is good, because it wasn't my strong point.). After taking advanced calculus and trigonometry courses I realized that limited math courses weren't going to be the norm. One of my professors gave me some great advice on this very subject - "You have to know the math to program the applications that will utilize or solve the equations."

Math is a critical component of software programming and engineering. I'd highly recommend brushing up on your math skills so that you can begin to utilize more complex math equations in your own applications - whether it's designing a new algorithm, improving performance in an existing one, or creating an application to solve a problem.

Hope this helps - and best of luck!

Zac

Hi Daniel,

It really depends on the type of developer job you would like to have. For example, front end jobs won't require you to do that much tough math.

You mention that you want a career as a software engineer, which could include a lot of different tasks and many of them including math and calculations as Zac told you. And if that is what you want to be, I would also recommend you to brush up on your math skills.

If you feel that you do not want to do a lot of math, then there are other options though. So there is no reason to give up :)

I hope that helps,

Jonas

thanks guys, that is very helpful. I was afraid that would be the answer! haha.. I guess I will have to look into doing a maths course then as I've been doing more back end so far and. it seems like I would be using it regularly.

As others have already said, it's largely dependent on what you're doing - even in backend, there are plenty of situations where you're not doing a huge amount of math (for example, there are roles within the server architecture space that require a granular understanding of networking [granted, small amount of bit-related math], but little to no advanced algorithms).

I wanted to specifically emphasize that math at its core is really just the study and implementation of strong logic; that is, what is the most efficient manner of achieving X? Yes, there's plenty of high-level math and algorithms used in a lot of advanced applications - but there are also a plenty of high-volume, scaled applications that handle millions of simultaneous requests that have few (if any) advanced algorithms. No, you aren't going to build an advanced AI or search engine based on machine learning - but you could definitely build something like Treehouse or Imgur or Reddit without too many advanced algos (though they would certainly help with performance at scale).

The big takeaway here is that strong logic is at the core of efficiency - you don't have to big a math whiz to be strong full-stack dev (and you could always hire a math major to do the algos for you, which you then just code in via basic order of operations). But, as others have mentioned, it definitely helps. And, in any case, you could always focus moreso on design, UI/X, or any of the other, equally valuable pieces of a useful application.