[ottocoder]

Hmmm, I would agree that some areas of mathematics are more "easily applicable" to programming.

However, mathematics is really all about reasoning and dealing with abstractions. A proof in linear algebra is not much different than proofs in real analysis or topology, in my opinion (the content might be very different, but the methods of reasoning are the same). So I think it really comes down to the answer to two questions: why study CS and why study math?

If we are a little more precise, and split "CS" into "computer science - the study of the theory of computation" and "programming" while also splitting "math" into "mathematics - the art of mathematical reasoning" and "a tool to solve problems" we can cross those two sets (to be a little math-nerdy :) and we get the following tuples:

(computer science, math for reasoning), (computer science, math as a tool), (programming, math for reasoning), (programming, math as a tool)

The problem is that people who have little or no exposure (and some people who have lots of exposure) may not think about/be aware of the difference between each of the tuples. Furthermore, by the time you understand the differences and what your personal preference is, you may have invested too much time into one particular school/program of study/however you're learning to switch.