[mcguire]

As you say, continuous math (to my mind, calculus, diffeq, and linear algebra; anything involving reals) is necessary for some problem domains. But accounting is necessary for some problem domains as well. And molecular biology.[1]

But if I get worked up into a good froth, I can make a case that software development is applied formal logic or applied abstract algebra (or both). I don't believe you can do professional software development (in Weinberg's sense) without some serious discrete math, in the same way you can't do signal processing without calculus.

[1] If you've got something that mixes the three, let me know. It's probably something I should stay away from.

[vonmoltke]

I must admit to ignorance of Weinberg's books and other writings. My interest is piqued now, though.

That said, based on your second statement nearly all scientific and engineering programming would not qualify as "professional software development". The code I worked on had little to no discrete math or formal logic in it. There was not an integer to be found save loop counters and array indices Do you not consider an (electrical engineer | mechanical engineer | physicist | molecular biologist) who can code and spends the vast majority of their time writing production code like this a professional software developer?