I'd say you should know your math or know how to access math before you
write software.
What if you are writing perl scripts to scan news articles for keyword
matches? Do you really need to understand how to classify non-degenerate
conics in affine geometry to make that happen? I don't think so. Why
must you have such a narrow view of one of the broadest professional
endeavors there is? You must know some math to do almost anything,
such as index a loop properly, but that's a far cry from every software
developer needing to understand vector calculus or even something much
simpler, such as how to perform inverse quadratic interpolation.
To go one step further, you need not even be able to derive the
quadratic formula from ax^2 + bx + c = 0, which most people do by
the 8th grade.
You really don't see how over the top your answer was do you?
Being capable of engineering something isn't as much a matter of
memorization as a matter of knowing enough and knowing how to find
stuff too.
Exactly. So why does someone asking where to find information
set you off so badly?
Heck I have TAOCP and other texts at arms length too. You don't see me
posting every 20 minutes on how todo this that or the otherthing.
No, it's usually something orthogonal to the question asked, with a
nice reference to how many people are using your software along with
4 or 5 exceptionally rude insults thrown in. Good luck staying employed
if you exhibit this type of behavior real life. You can count on
someone walking down the hall and asking you or someone near you the
answer to a "stupid homework problem". If you accuse them of trying
to do homework on the clock, you'll be lucky to finish the day still
employed.
Given that I'm a fairly hefty 2m tall person myself I wouldn't feel that
much intimidated. That being said, I have something called conviction. I
actually believe, get this... you'll love it, that academia is a worthwhile
pursuit and that people who trivialize it (e.g. average college student) are
making a mockery of what it is to learn.
Hint: Not everyone is a college student. You treating everyone as if they
are a freshman getting initiated into a fraternity isn't appreciated.
If the dude was really not a student then he's still lame since google is a
click away [and probably faster].
Or, maybe he thought that someone here could give him a more direct pointer
than the 262,000 hits google returns for matrix inversion. Perhaps, he
didn't expect to get drawn and quartered for asking a question.
If the guy was a student then shame on him. It's people like him that get
A+ while I get C+ [since I actually do the work and actually do other stuff
on the side] then go on thinking they're professional...
Is there anyone that you don't despise? How dare anyone ask a question?
How dare they get better grades than you? How dare they not specialize
in crypto and/or bignum math? blah, blah, blah...