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When it comes to coding, non-programmers do not have to be in a defensive position worried that their job is under risk, instead they just see a great tool that
by sega_sai 2mo ago
When it comes to coding, non-programmers do not have to be in a defensive position worried that their job is under risk, instead they just see a great tool that saves them time, especially doing boring coding like dashboards, visualizations, interactive web-pages, or doing experiments that they otherwise would not have time for.
- hansmayer 2mo ago[dead]
- simonw 2mo agoA lot of mathematicians are worried: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/mathematicians-warn-of-ai-threats-to-profession-as-industry-encroaches/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/mathematicians-w...
- jdright 2mo agoMathematicians are a kind of programmers, the original ones.
- lagrange77 2mo agoWhy are mathematicians a kind of programmers? Besides applied maths, aren't they more researchers that explore and discover, in contrast to the majority of programmers who are more like handymen?
- lanstin 2mo agoMetamathematics, by Kleene, is programming in maths. Theoretical computer science is maths. A lot of foundations work is programming. Coding itself is like an extended problem set from a maths class. LaTeX itself is programming. The difference to me is one of directionality - maths research is seeing a far off island and getting there by hook or by crook; bridge, draining the swamp, inventing an airplane or boat, whatever it takes. Software engineering is like covering a plain with tiles - every feature is ultimately filled in and the underlying beauty is obscured by a fractal of complexity required by the ever growing requirements.
- lagrange77 2mo ago> Metamathematics, by Kleene, is programming in maths. Ookay. Back in the day i was confused by 'Linear programming', which is optimisation and has nothing to do with coding. > every feature is ultimately filled in and the underlying beauty is obscured by a fractal of complexity required by the ever growing requirements. Right. I would say Mathematics tries to unobscure (patterns in) nature. Engineering is creating tools, sometimes leveraging natural patterns. But yeah, Fourier or Laplace definitely created tools, too.
- lanstin 2mo agoThe * in regular expressions is from that book by Kleene; it used to be called the Kleene star. And the book is all building up the apparatus of functional programs, recursion, implementations of arithmetic and logic, etc. it is a great book for programmers. But it is for basic computability theory, the Gödel incompleteness theorem, results on regular languages and so on.
- lagrange77 2mo agoInteresting. Yes, functional programming feels a lot more mathy than procedural or OOP.
- CuriouslyC 2mo agoDisagree. Programming is about sequences (behavior, state, data, etc), math is about relations.
- lowsong 2mo ago"When it comes to a field I'm not an expert in, AI is a great tool." Every time.
- alansaber 2mo agoYes, because AI gets the "shape" of something right. If you don't know the field you don't notice the pockmarked surface.
- lagrange77 2mo agoI think the opposite is true.
- wizzwizz4 2mo agoSo does anyone familiar with the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
- perching_aix 2mo ago[dead]
- azan_ 2mo agoTao is not an expert in math research? That's a really high bar then.