287. How Much Math Does a Developer Need to Know?

How much math does a developer need to know? And how much time will be spent doing math in software development? Is it worth taking an extra math class or two in order to improve my chances of getting a job as a developer? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

How much math does a developer need to know? And how much time will be spent doing math in software development? Is it worth taking an extra math class or two in order to improve my chances of getting a job as a developer? These are the questions we're going to discuss in today's episode of Dev Questions.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Welcome to the Dev Questions podcast with Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Software development is more than just writing code. So let's talk about the rest of it. Specifically, let's talk about the part math has to play in software development. Now, right now I can almost hear the answers from experienced developers. The problem is that some of them are saying you don't need math at all as a software developer, while others are saying you need lots of math to be a software developer. So wherein does the truth lie? Well, the age-old answer, it depends. The vast majority of software development roles involve writing line of business applications. This would include front-end work building web apps with tools like Blazor React, back-end work like talking to the database, or business logic work like turning business rules into code. In general, these tasks involve little to no math at all. But it isn't just about the amount of time you spend on math, it's the level of math you need. For these jobs, you'll need basic arithmetic. So you'll need addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, knowing how to work with percentages, and other basic tasks. That's about all you're going to need. Now, these layout business applications, they're not sexy, they're not amazing tools, but this is how the world runs. This is what powers almost every business out there. And so there are a lot of jobs building these layout business applications. You may say, well, I don't want to do that. I want to do something different. That's great, but the vast majority of jobs are doing just this. So if you don't want to do that, that's fine, but you're limiting the number of roles you can do. And quite frankly, you can always do this role, right? So you can always fall into this role, even if if your first thing you want to do falls through, there's usually a job here in this field. So this is the majority of software development jobs. You don't have to know math. In fact, for the vast majority of my career, I didn't do hardly any math at work. Now, I was originally going to become an electrical engineer, which means a lot of math. And so I spent my first year at college, which is the only year I actually spent at college. I went back to get my degree later. But my first year on campus at college, I spent taking lots of math classes, including calculus one and calculus two. And so I went through some advanced math classes. Now, I didn't go any further than that, and I'm kind of thankful I didn't because while I could do it, I didn't love it. But I didn't use any of that stuff. And quite frankly, my calculus skills are rather rusty and I wouldn't trust them. And yet, I have been a developer for almost 30 years in the industry now. So, yes, you can get by just fine. And not even get by, you can thrive and work at a number of different companies. I've been a consultant and worked at dozens, if not hundreds, of different companies working on various applications that they have running and never need anything more than general math skills. So in that level, you don't have to know math in order to be a developer. That used to be something that we would think about and talk about, but not anymore, because now a lot of that work is done for you and you don't really need to know math. Okay, now the exception to that rule mainly revolves around specific industries. For instance, you might need additional math knowledge to build accounting software. And this is where having additional skills outside of just I'm a software developer can be very beneficial. If you are an accountant who also is a software developer, or you were trained as an accountant, but now you're a software developer, you can bring those skills to bear and target accounting companies who might be a software developer and you have a leg up in the competition. That doesn't guarantee you a job, but what it does do is it gives you a nice added benefit or bonus to your skill set. Because, yeah, accounting is more than just basic math. There's some additional things you have to know. And as a developer, while you can get by to an extent without knowing all about the business, you really need to know the ins and outs of the business in order to build effective applications. When I worked at an insurance company, I spent time in class learning how to be an insurance adjuster. So I knew the basics of how insurance works so that I could then build applications around our insurance products. The same was true for a number of different other fields that I worked in as well. So knowing how the field works is important. So if you're working in accounting or you're working in finance, you're working with the stock market applications or analytics dashboards, yeah, you're going to know potentially some different types of math, but that's industry specific. But there's other types of software developers that will need more math. I worked for a while as a consultant working on integrating with physical machinery. And so I would integrate with the PLCs and other things that were controlling conveyor belts and robots and other things. But I stayed on the software side of things, on the Windows development mostly side of things. And I had coworkers or my boss would work on the robotics side of things. But if I dabbled there, I could end up getting into some additional math like geometry and trigonometry and linear algebra and those kind of things. So that could bring in additional skills or need additional skills if you want to kind of cross over in that area. Another big one that's really hot right now, and people think they want to go into until they realize what it actually means is machine learning or AI development. Now, there is some confusion here because you can work with an AI or LLM. You can use it in your applications. I built a whole course around doing that. We didn't use any math or we didn't use any math at all. But at the same time, you can use that and not have to use any math, but if you want to build that AI, not build an application that uses an AI, but build the AI itself, which granted is not nearly as common of a job, but it can be something that software developers do. If you want to do that, or if you want to get into machine learning or other advanced types of really just a math job, it's almost more of a math job than it is a software development job at that point. You have to know statistics, calculus, linear algebra, and more to get into those fields. So, yes, that would be a math-heavy software development job. Game development is another one. This sometimes surprises people, but game development really does use quite a bit of math. There's a lot to do with vectors and trigonometry and geometry and linear algebra and more, where you're working with how do I place this thing in the world and then how does it interact with everything around it? And how do I think about this object in 2D or 3D space? So there's a lot going on when it comes to game development. And yes, you need to think about those things, pathing and all the rest. So there is gonna be more math in game development than you would in a line of business application. So the bottom line is this: you don't need to learn advanced math to be a developer. That's a thing from a bygone era when we had massive computers and punch cards and all the rest. That used to be a thing. Now it's not anymore. Learning math won't necessarily increase your chances of getting a job, because it's not really that big of a benefit for most jobs. Any other skills you have will benefit your development career. So if you have math skills, you might be beneficial, it might benefit you if, like say you have accounting skills or if you have skills that might aid you in a certain job. Well, in the same way, if you have skills as a realtor or in the medical field or any number of other fields, you might also receive those same benefits in different areas of software development. So it's not like math is the only place you can gain additional benefits. You can gain additional benefits by having any other real-world experience. So in general, I would not focus on math as being necessary for software development. I wouldn't even say it's preferable for software development. There's a lot of things you can gain, a lot of additional secondary skills that you could gain that would add benefit to you. Math just isn't necessarily high on that list. Again, unless you're going to a specialized field that requires more of it. The biggest one probably is game development. Next up to AI development. So that's my thoughts on math and software development. Don't worry about it unless you really want to, but I'd focus first on becoming a great software developer and then see if you want to add those additional skills as well. Thanks for listening. As always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCorey.com and enroll in a course.