[chrisseaton]

> when you can just shove it into the existing math classes

This is how it's already done in the UK, and has been for decades. When I was in high-school (or rather the UK equivalent) about twenty years ago we did discrete maths, algorithms, and data structures in the regular maths classes. I don't think computers were even mentioned - it was all described as maths topics.

And this was a bog-standard state school.

So when I want to university interviews I was already able to describe for example how to implement a hash table.

[closeparen]

I’m thankful every day for getting into programming early enough to know that the adults saying “programming is like math” were full of shit. No career could be less appealing than cranking arithmetic, polynomials, integrals, and derivatives for 8 hours day in and day out, which is of course what “math” means when you’re in K12. If it were introduced to me in that context and by teachers with that mindset, I wouldn’t be here.

[chrisseaton]

> which is of course what “math” means when you’re in K12

But you have it backwards. When programming is introduced as maths people see how maths is more than ‘ arithmetic, polynomials, integrals, and derivatives’.

[GolDDranks]

After well into getting programming, I finally started appreciating the phrase "programming is like math" - part of it was me learning more about programming and computer science, but most of it was because I realized that what we call "math" isn't all of math, and there's a wealth of interesting computational topics in math that doesn't fit the standard school curriculum thing.

Maybe it's just semantics, but I think our common perception of math is too narrow.

[em-bee]

well the parent doesn't make programming be like math, but extends math into programming. i didn't have that experience in my school but i can imagine that it would make math actually more interesting for some. otherwise you are right of course. programming is very different from regular K12 math.

[MarcScott]

Not any more. I think you'll find that the maths specifications have been trimmed down a little.[1]

Now we have discrete Computer Science at GCSE and A-Level.

[1] https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/mathematics/specifica...

[OJFord]

Within mathematics, the 'D' (e.g. D1) modules are 'discrete' at A level, and are mostly (basic) graph theory/algorithms.

Cf. 'S' (Statistics), 'M' (Mechanics, i.e. mathematics of physics), 'C' (Core), and 'FP' (Further Pure).

You're right that Computer Science/Computing is separate, but it's not a particularly common and certainly not a required choice for people pursuing CS, many view it as unworthwhile/a joke either in advance or retrospect.

Certainly when I went through they'd far rather you took as much mathematics as possible (which can be three full A levels - Mathematics/Further/Additional if you take all of the modules) followed by sciences. A faculty member at Cambridge expressed an explicit preference for Latin over Computing at A level.