29.12.2021 –, Chaos-West TV
Sprache: English
Math and hacking - two separate worlds at odds or secret lovers?
Lovers, of course! How so, you might ask - math is boring and useless! (And hacking is
great fun, of course.) We'll try to change your mind!
Be honest: When you're hacking, aren't you really building a world
inside a system that operates according to fixed, pedantic, boring
rules? (And when the system does not operate according to those
rules, do you not get annoyed?) That's secretly a form of applied
mathematics! Now, math has been around for hundreds of years and has
helped humanity build worlds of the mind, some of them to help
understand reality around us. This is just like software, and thus
math can help use build better worlds inside the computer. Forget the
boring math you learned in school: Enter the world of monoids and
abstract nonsense! Understand how you can use it to build better
worlds and more useful software, and to enjoy hacking even more!
Mike's first programming experiences were in the local department
store, and his formative learning experiences were all shaped by the
hacker culture of the 1980s. Since then, he was a university
researcher and educator (and researcher on education), a freelance
developer, and finally a CEO. He has continuously taught programming
in high schools, universities, to kids, and commercially, and uses
math whenever he's hacking.