[TheOtherHobbes]

The drop-outs are "succeeding wildly" because people like Turing, Church, and Hilbert invented the sand pit they're playing in.

Knuth created LaTeX. Pandoc is written in Haskell, famous for being a completely useless academic language with no real purpose beyond torturing undergraduates (it says here.) Efficient search and data compression algorithms aren't hacked together in late night hobby coding sessions.

Cryptography, digital signal processing for images, sound, and video, and ML core algorithms are all mathematical inventions. The digital world literally runs on them.

"Real world achievers" might want to try being a little less parochial and a little more educated about the originators of the concepts and environments they take for granted.

Vibe coding "Social AI chatbot network with ads = $$profit$$" or "Cat videos as a service" is only possible because the entire field stands on the shoulders of mathematical giants.

[grumpyprole]

Well said. I guess such ignorance is not that surprising given that most "programming" today is glueing code together with scripting languages. This is really just a form of configuration. It certainly requires domain knowledge and a tolerance for digital bureaucracy, but not always maths. I do wish schools would do a better job of teaching that the entire fabric of western civilization rests upon mathematics.

[pdntspa]

It sounds like these advanced skills might be needed to build the platforms that the dropouts build on top of. But I agree that, as a professional programmer of 20 years with a 4-year business degree from a state school with a weak math background (and also as someone with a talent for writing and language), I have very little need for advanced math in my day-to-day.

[GoblinSlayer]

>mathematical inventions

Like Rijndael?