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by davidxc 2364 days ago
I believe my real analysis class made me a significantly better programmer and thinker in general, but I don't use anything specific from it (not yet, anyway).
2 comments

Genuinely curious how real analysis made you a better programmer...? I've taken it and loved it, but my interest was more due to physics/engineering applications. I can't see a connection to programming.
I suspect it could be that real analysis truly makes you challenge your assumptions and forces you to build a habit of thinking through corner cases.

Other maths courses do this as well, but real analysis is particularly vivid for some people because of all the fun counter-examples you get to see in a well-taught course, such as a function that is everywhere continuous but nowhere differentiable.

This habit of thinking through corner cases is something I miss from a lot of (junior) programmers.

What does real analysis have to do with category theory?