[dicroce]

I used to suck at algebra, then I wrote c++ code for 30 years... now I can see how they differ and how they are similar.

sometimes when you are programming in a big body of code you are dealing with lots of types (types in the programming sense)... and you are dealing with functions that have type signatures that must be satisfied to avoid compile errors... so you wrap this type in that one so you can call that function.. or you convert the return value from one type to another so you can call something else...

anyway, that is all similar to what you are doing when you manipulate an equation. you follow the rules and change it into a form that is more useful.