[abdullahkhalids]

Depends entirely on what you are trying to get out of this.

If you want to write a game engine or something, you just need to understand some equations and how to implement them.

If you actually want to understand physics - as in the rhyme and rhythm of the physical world - you will have to grind it out. Your coding skills won't help you much. No one has written an essay on the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Coding in the Natural Sciences [1], because there isn't much. Most you will get out of your coding skills is that you can quickly numerically simulate some physics equations. But simulating equations is not physics.

Rather than simulating the models, the skill of Physics is to build the models that correctly describe the system in question. Building models requires actions like making the correct assumptions or identifying the symmetries of the system. These skill emerge from mathematically modeling a large number of systems, in a wide variety of domains, so you get the intuitive understanding of what to do when faced with a novel system. Mathematics provides a very convenient framework for making assumptions and identifying symmetries, while coding does not.

So, really, the prescription is to master calculus, linear algebra and differential equations, and then grind your way through about ten physics courses in sequence. There is no shortcuts unfortunately.

I would recommend paying graduate students at your local university to tutor you.

[1] https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf

[avmich]

> No one has written an essay on the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Coding in the Natural Sciences [1], because there isn't much.

Exhibit A: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-html/

[abdullahkhalids]

Many of the advancements in computing technology and coding occurred precisely because of Physics. The Manhattan project had human computers to compute the results of theoretical equations. Later early digital computers were used for a wide variety of physics applications. Part of the development of the internet is credited to CERN.

Coding is very useful for parts of Physics. But if you look at the core of the physics skill - being able to build theories and models of new systems - you will see that almost all the fundamental discovery work in Physics was done before the era of digital computers. And despite of now a lifetime of usage of inane amounts of computing powers in Physics, we have hardly discovered any foundational results.

Sure numerical analysis is critical for building intuition about complex systems. And it is a necessary part of a physicists training. And this excellent book does exactly this - derives a bunch of physics equations using mathematics, and then implements them in lisp to build intuition. But writing code will help you with the core physics skill much less than actually struggling with mathematics.

[avmich]

Scott Aaronson, from shtetl-optimized fame, describes his work as on the boundary of math, physics and computers. P vs. NP problem is a CS problem yet has some apparent consequences in quantum world.

Not quite coding though.