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Yes, sort of. Having programmed since I was ten years old as a hobby, having taught myself a couple versions of BASIC, some Z-80 assembly, some 6510 assembly, and some Pascal, I went to college planning to be a Computer Science major. I quickly discovered that I was really ill-prepared in math. I took geometry and Algebra 1 and 2 in high school, with some pretty awful teachers. My school didn't offer AP classes. I had taken about everything my high school had to offer including chemistry and physics, but I failed the math placement exam and was in classes with 17-year-olds who had 3 semesters of AP calculus or IB classes. So, I had to take remedial algebra and an elementary functions class before I got to Calculus 111. That class was heavily oriented towards math majors (prove everything). Some of my fellow CS students realized this and started taking math requirements over the summer at other schools that taught them a little easier. A CS major would have required more calculus, discrete math, abstract algebra, linear algebra and probably some other classes that I have forgotten; it was basically a math major + programming. So, I had to make a shift - I decided to major in English (my other love) and take a Computer Science minor. I took every programming class my schedule allowed (operating systems, assembly language, 2 semesters of Pascal+data structures, a programming languages class, an algorithms class, audited a computer architecture class) and taught myself C and Macintosh GUI programming on the side, and started developing HyperCard XMDs and XFCNs and working on instructional multimedia for faculty. I've worked as a software developer/engineer more or less since graduation in 1989 with a B.A. degree, doing all kinds of programming, including >20 years spent specializing in embedded and DSP programming (yes, of course I use math constantly, mostly algebra, but some calculus concepts such as PID and digital filters, a practical rather than whiteboard approach), but with an English degree, just teaching myself as much as I could on the side, and I never went back to school. So, I kind of love Computer Science, I definitely love programming, I definitely love math despite still being relatively bad at it, but I really don't like academia. |