--- layout: post author: Pascal Cuoq date: 2012-01-20 20:50 +0200 categories: rant format: xhtml title: "Math proofs and programming" summary: --- {% raw %}

Speaking of John Carmack, in his twitter feed, he notes:

In hindsight it is surprising that I disliked doing math proofs in high school despite already being a programmer.

It says a lot about the French education system that I started teaching myself programming at 6 and officially switched from mathematics to computer science as a 20-year-old first-year ENS student. And I know why I disliked doing math proofs most of that time too: for exactly the same reason I would have disliked programming if it had been done with paper and ink.

As a 6-year-old child I would run the BASIC program I was typing (either from a listing or making it up as I was going along) every five or so typed statements. Try that with a math proof.

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