I’m working my way to a CS degree and am currently slogging my way through an 8-week Trig course. I barely passed College Algebra and have another Algebra and two Calculus classes ahead of me.

How much of this will I need in a programming job? And, more importantly, if I suck at Math, should I just find another career path?

You are viewing a single thread.
View all comments
4 points

Depends on the industry and depth you want to go to, gamedev for example you can do without any, but all lower level custom graphics and physics are pretty calculus heavy.

Website dev can be entirely independent of math

permalink
report
reply
5 points
*

Depends entirely on your definition of “gamedev”, IMO. If you’re trying to write a platformer in basic C with no external libraries, you will absolutely need to use algebra/geometry/etc. and maybe even some more advanced things like physics/calculus depending on what features/effects you want to put in your game.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

I would uh consider that pretty in deep gamedev, even lower than some shader code lmao - so yes you would need to know some math.

Cracking open Godot and using a bunch of premade assets hardly even requires programming, much less mathematical knowledge

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*

Be that as it may, I personally wouldn’t consider someone to be a very knowledgeable (on how games actually work) game developer if they didn’t at least know how to use things like linear algebra to make a character run and jump naturally and such, even if they’re not coding like that day to day and just using a higher level framework.

You don’t have to agree with me, and I still respect your opinion either way.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-1 points

That’s a really ridiculous example though. No one is doing that.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

I’m doing that. I know several others who have as well.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Ya, in gamedev you just need triginometry, lerp, quaternions, matrix multiplications and basic 3D math and maybe some more.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Me opening rpgmaker to do some matrix multiplication

permalink
report
parent
reply

Programming

!programming@programming.dev

Create post

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person’s post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you’re posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don’t want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



Community stats

  • 3K

    Monthly active users

  • 895

    Posts

  • 7.7K

    Comments