Programming with sub-par math skills?

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I have never been that great at math yet I am trying to learn programming
as of right now I am learning python and am getting good ad it (But I know it's one of the easiest languages )
which languages should I avoid and what languages should I shift towards?

Don't avoid a language just because your math skills aren't great. Go wherever need and/or curiosity take you; they may just be the motivation you need to improve your math skills, but you won't even know what you can or cannot do until you try.

Python is cool, I want to learn it. I use Grasshopper for Rhino, but you can do a lot more with Python scripting. I'm also horrible at math.

My math skills are terrible but I would like to learn to program as well. What's a good language to start with? I have a little bit of experience with BASIC, but that's it.

I was referred by someone on this forum to codeacademy.com, and Python is the language I started with on there as I often see it listed as a good starting language. It is pretty straightforward and simple, I'm almost done with the Python course, and then I will probably start with Java or something, not really sure yet.

EDIT: To answer the OP's question, I think pretty much every language is going to require math skills, and I doubt that many are going to be better or worse in that regard. Obviously it depends on what you are wanting to do with it, but it seems to me that it's probably more important to start off with languages that are simpler as a whole, because I doubt any one language will be easier or harder just in regard to mathematics.

Last edited by L_Holmes on 06 Aug 2014, 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

So, what's a good way to start learning Python?

codeacadamy.com is a free website for this, it has a whole course you can take and it explains it pretty well. I also found a book called "Learn Python the Hard Way" (apparently that means by repetition of coding to get really good at it), so that could be a good resource as well.

http://www.learnpython.org/

I think that the best way to decide which language to start with is to determine your goals. If you want to program just for the hell of it, it doesn't matter much, but if there is the possibility of a computer science major, or a programming job or personal project in your future, one should be a bit more choosy unless one plans to have plenty of time to learn languages one may never use.

Furthermore, frankly I've never encountered much math in the process of learning or using any programming language I've used, except when I was writing a program that calculates stuff. The most math I've ever encountered in learning to use a language was recursion. Math doesn't really come into the picture until one begins to learn algorithms and data structures.

For me, I learn a lot of my math skills by programming. I learned calculus and trig when I was 11 years old by programming in BASIC and that was over 30 years ago. I guess what I am saying is. Don't let your poor math skills turn you off from programming. In fact, see this a an opportunity to learn them on the side. Believe me, your math skills will improve dramatically just by learning to program alone.

Python can be learned without much math skills. Having said that, you should at least learn boolean algebra; this is extremely useful. In more advanced languages, knowledge of trignonometry, vectors, and matrices is also important.

Honestly math is way overrated in terms of its applicability to life as a programmer. I suppose it depends a lot on what sorts of applications you'd be programming and what the subject matter is, but I've worked in IT now for nearly 20 years, mostly as a developer, and I don't think I've ever used much math beyond pretty basic stuff - probably not much beyond what you'd learn in Algebra 2 in high school. Of course if you want to write a program to solve differential equations, it helps to know something about differential equations But really if I look back the amount of math I took in college - two semesters of 2D calculus, and one sememster each of 3d calculus, Linear Algebra, combinatorics, probabilities, numerical analysis and probably one or two others that I'm not recalling, and while almost all of it could be applicable in some types of programming (again, really depending on the subject matter) you could get by in many types of programming knowing little to none of it. For instance linear algebra is quite useful in computer graphics, but I never really did much with computer graphics.

In any case though, how much and what math you need to know is really related to what you want to program, not what language you are going to use to do it. so if you aren't good at math, I don't feel you have any need to particularly avoid or embrace any particular languages.

Step 1: Install and setup Python
Step 2: Play

Very serious about the play part. Go to whatever part of the language or libraries you want. Ask yourself "What does this button do?" and push it. I'm serious about this. That learning approach works wonders!

I can relate to your situation fully. Personally I have never been good at math but love to program. I started off with learning BASIC in high school back in 2000 and last year decided I wanted to start learning again. I decided with Python and learned the basics through the website codeacademy and I was off to the races. One definetely doesn't have to accel in math to write good programs.
Now I'm learning some more through a nicely interactive app available on Android through Udacity.com!

I don't see the two as synonymous.

Math skills are not essential to be able to program a computer. Computer programing is about CODING, and that's not math-based. It's more about syntax and attention to detail. If you are coding a program that's going to calculate math, then it's more relevant.

If you are writing a program to do number crunching, you are going to have to tell it how to crunch those numbers.

If you don't know algebra that well, discrete math would be very helpful, as well as boolian logic.

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If programmers wrote songs, it would be "Rainy days OR Mondays get me down". Note "always" would be redundant.