Do software engineers need to know math?
No, software engineers don’t need math, as lots of answers here point out.But from the question details I get the sense that the question really wants to ask “are there any software engineering positions where you need to know math?” The answer to that is definitely yes.Lots of positions require doing numerical computations. These days, machine learning is a big one; you’ll definitely need to know math: linear algebra, calculus, gradient descent.Video games and other computer graphics applications require math to compute positions and color values and such.If you work in compilers or PL theory, you’ll want to know some mathematical logic.If you work on crypto libraries, you’ll want to know number theory or maybe even more advanced stuff like elliptic curves. (If you’re just using crypto libraries, you won’t need to know any of that.)I don’t know if you count “algorithms/data structures” as math, but certainly lots of applications require knowledge of those. High-performance computing and wide distributed systems will have plenty of opportunities for an algorithmist to shine.—In my last 3 years as a software engineer, where I mostly did “generic web development” I used barely any math. But I did do things like:fermi calculations to find out how much resources large database migration operations would takesome basic algebra so I could write CSS to position stuff the way I wanteddetermine the probability of collisions among randomly generated IDsconstruct algorithms by drawing diagrams with arrows in a way that felt vaguely mathySo I think that if you look for it, you can find uses for math even among the more “straightforward” software engineering jobs. You can get by without it, but it can still help in little ways.
How can I prepare to become a software engineer?
How much math you'll need depends on what you end up working on- if you're doing game development or making an image editor, you'll need quite a bit of math. If you're working on a word processing program, not so much. You'll still want to take a lot of math classes, and any programming classes your school offers. If you want to get started programming, there are tons of free tools online you can use. I'd recommend starting with the Python programming language- it's fairly easy to learn, reasonably popular (Google uses it quite a bit), and there are tons of resources online. http://www.python.org You can also try other languages as well. If you're using a Mac, you can download Xcode, Apple's developer tools, for free (you need to register though). Microsoft has a free Express version of their Visual Studio. You can also download Java, which is used a lot for enterprise programming. Eclipse is an extremely powerful IDE used primarily for Java though you can download plugins to work with almost any other language. Personally, I'd suggest you start with a simple programming editor like Notepad++ (Windows), Kate (Linux), or TextMate (Mac) rather than a full-fledged IDE. You don't want to become dependent on the tools.
Career in Cyber Security or Computer Animation?
I would like to study computer animation because I love to draw and this field really interests me, however I have read that it is difficult to find a job because the field is very competitive. Now I am considering cyber security because obviously it's more money and more in demand as far as jobs go. I'm worried that I'd have to be a genius to make it in Cyber security. I've already spend 3 years in college and changed my mind twice on my major. I don't want to waste any more time so this time I would like to be sure that what I go for will be my career. I'd hate to go to school and not find a job. Any advice on which is a better choice, ups and downs, etc.?