Wtf is this shit? I just wanted to make games

There's plenty of stuff you could do but the hardware could not muster 20 years ago. Heck.. graphics cards weren't even around back then.

I was exaggerating, but it's not like someone is going to even attempt to recreate a physics engine from scratch.

The tech has evolved over many years using lots of money and experts. Almost all game programmers are going to use preexisting systems.

The math will be very useless for game programming.

Someone who uses a tool without understanding how it works is no better than a trained monkey.

Lots of people still do that every day and even at home. Doing ray tracers, physics engines. The focus shifts. Most of the algorithms developed during the 1900 will have to be completely replaced by parallellizable algorithms to perform decently on any new hardware since everything moves towards parallellism these days.

That sounds cool. I am still not very convinced that most people will get to use the math that they are forced to learn, but I guess there definitely will be some lucky ones doing some very interesting things (e.g. Like the parallelization that you brought up).

Yes maybe many people who take courses don't end up coding using the content of the courses. What do you mean "get to". They will do it one way or another. The question is if people will be wise enough to benefit from it or if they will throw it in the bin. There is always someone responsible for resource allocation somewhere.

Almost no programmer that I know needs any advanced math from college to do their job. College taught no practical skills.

I suppose they could do differential equations as a hobby after work, but who is really going to do that?

Tight. If this is really just undergrad ODEs, your prof. put a cool problem on there. Problem 3 is just doing a basic finite element method by hand.

Lol best post ever. You get 20 Veeky Forums points, go over to Veeky Forums and transfer those to bitcoin. :)

Yes most jobs don't require very advanced math. But that is not the question. The question is how can we help people with money have any use for their money. It's not by encouraging people who probably could be making algorithm breakthroughs to be satisfied coding web-apps.

The math spoon fed to computer science majors is for building a foundation in having strong logic. Programming requires the same rigor that's presented in math, just different approaches in certain areas, but very comparable fields. So what is the real reason us computer science majors have to do math, it's because we need to be trusted. How can a manager trust a programmer who can't solve a simple integration problem? If you were self taught and didn't go to college that's okay, but if you did go to college and sucked at math and thought you were good at programming then there needs to be a good reason why.

Okay. To me that sounds convoluted and wasteful. There were a lot of interesting and challenging problems that could have been taught in college that were not.

I think the only reason that it is taught is because it is easy and cheap to teach.

You can use the same book and nearly the same curriculum for 20+ years and your students just need a piece of paper and a pencil.

The consequence is that CS students are graduating without any applicable skills and are forced to compete with boot camp grads who paid almost nothing and spent only a summer to become more marketable than a large percent of those who chose the traditional route.

Yes for the more practically oriented roles you are right, then taking too theoretical courses at a college could be wasteful.

But saying everything that has been done is already done is not correct. Even the most theoretical computer science will need to adapt to the massive explosion of cores to stay relevant.

Keep in mind that's a small percentage though, those boot camp programmers are few, growing in numbers yes but trust me people who have a bachelors degree in computer science are EXTREMELY marketable. You have to be either retarded or live in a really bad location to not have opportunities with a computer science degree.

I see. Good point.

Actually, I am pretty excited about some of the new tech that looks like it will become popularized over the next few years.

VR, Neural Nets, and IoT looks exciting and, like you are pointing out, will likely require a lot of foundational math and programming skills/techniques.