[sega_sai]

When it comes to coding, non-programmers do not have to be in a defensive position worried that their job is under risk, instead they just see a great tool that saves them time, especially doing boring coding like dashboards, visualizations, interactive web-pages, or doing experiments that they otherwise would not have time for.

[simonw]

A lot of mathematicians are worried: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/mathematicians-w...

[jdright]

Mathematicians are a kind of programmers, the original ones.

[lagrange77]

Why are mathematicians a kind of programmers? Besides applied maths, aren't they more researchers that explore and discover, in contrast to the majority of programmers who are more like handymen?

[lanstin]

Metamathematics, by Kleene, is programming in maths. Theoretical computer science is maths. A lot of foundations work is programming. Coding itself is like an extended problem set from a maths class. LaTeX itself is programming.

The difference to me is one of directionality - maths research is seeing a far off island and getting there by hook or by crook; bridge, draining the swamp, inventing an airplane or boat, whatever it takes. Software engineering is like covering a plain with tiles - every feature is ultimately filled in and the underlying beauty is obscured by a fractal of complexity required by the ever growing requirements.

[lagrange77]

> Metamathematics, by Kleene, is programming in maths.

Ookay.

Back in the day i was confused by 'Linear programming', which is optimisation and has nothing to do with coding.

> every feature is ultimately filled in and the underlying beauty is obscured by a fractal of complexity required by the ever growing requirements.

Right. I would say Mathematics tries to unobscure (patterns in) nature. Engineering is creating tools, sometimes leveraging natural patterns. But yeah, Fourier or Laplace definitely created tools, too.

[lanstin]

The * in regular expressions is from that book by Kleene; it used to be called the Kleene star. And the book is all building up the apparatus of functional programs, recursion, implementations of arithmetic and logic, etc. it is a great book for programmers. But it is for basic computability theory, the Gödel incompleteness theorem, results on regular languages and so on.

[CuriouslyC]

Disagree. Programming is about sequences (behavior, state, data, etc), math is about relations.

[lowsong]

"When it comes to a field I'm not an expert in, AI is a great tool."

Every time.

[azan_]

Tao is not an expert in math research? That's a really high bar then.

[alansaber]

Yes, because AI gets the "shape" of something right. If you don't know the field you don't notice the pockmarked surface.

[lagrange77]

I think the opposite is true.

[wizzwizz4]

So does anyone familiar with the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.