Programming

I don't think you necessarily need to have studied a lot of math to be successful in programming, but you will need it if you want to get a CS degree, which in turn can be a good lever to a fruitful programming career.

My advice when it comes to math - math skills build upon the concepts you're expected to have learned before, meaning that if you didn't fully get everything in the past, then your foundation is not in great shape and you will struggle at higher levels. Going back and repeating the fundamentals just so that you fully understand everything is very helpful in my experience.

I also think that understanding math is rewarding in itself, for what it's worth!

There's a lot of programming you can do with zero or very basic math skills. But some stuff can require a lot. But I'm quite sure you could manage a career very nicely without ever touching those areas. People who do that are probably seeking those things out.

you can program without math, but it will be hard to pass a rigorous interview without math.

You should strive to learn symbolic math at least, and make sure you can do all the leet code problems and explanations using whatever math you are comfortable with.

As others have said, It depends on what kind of programming you do. Some areas requite a lot. Others not so much. It's logic, not math, that is needed the most.

You may want to check if your college has a different kind of programming degree. As I understand things, there are basically two kinds of programming degrees. "Computer Science" has much steeper math requirements and focuses on applications that deal with Science or engineering issues. "MIS (Management Information Systems)" degrees focus on actual programming that businesses need, not programs that are science or engineering focused.

You often need to be pretty good at math. But not because you're "doing math" to write the code.

In real world software systems, you need to handle monitoring and alerting. To properly do this, you need to understand stats, rolling averages, percentiles, probability distributions, and significance testing. At least at a basic level. Enough to know how to recognize these problems and where to look when you run into them.

For being a better coder, you need to understand mathematical logic, proofs, algebra/symbolic logic, etc in order to reason your way through tricky edge cases.

To do AI/ML, you need to know a shitton of calculus and diff eqs, plus numerical algorithms concepts like numerical stability. This is kinda a niche (but rapidly growing) engineering field.

The same thing about AI also applies to any other domain where the thing being computed is fundamentally a math or logic solution. This is somewhat common in backend engineering.

I'm not "doing math" with pen and paper at work, but I do use all of these mathematical skills all. the. time.

I am an SRE on a ML serving platform.

Math skills can occasionally be useful, but I don’t see it as a dealbreaker.

The good thing about being good with math is that it usually means you’re a good problem solver, and problem solving is an important skill for programming. But the reverse isn’t necessarily true. You can be good at problem solving but still be bad at math.

I would say if you’re struggling with the programming courses, then maybe look somewhere else. Otherwise, go ahead.

Practical programming itself does not require this kind of math. The stuff you're trying to make a program do might; but even then I don't think you'll have difficulty in that context. The stuff you're learning now will have had time to "settle", and you'll be working towards a concrete goal, which makes it easier in my experience.

Another thing is that just because you're struggling right now doesn't mean you'll be struggling forever. Math didn't really click for me until I took calculus. I had a math professor who it didn't click for until their junior year of college as a math major.

So don't sweat it. But it's always a good idea to have another career idea or two in your back pocket just in case. There are lots of reasons you might not want to be a programmer as a career. You might hate it. You might love it enough that you want to be able to do it freely instead of at the behest of others for money.

These kinds of anxieties are normal for someone your age (assuming you're not nontraditional student). But one day you'll look behind you in all these worries will seem unjustified. Everything will almost certainly turn out fine.

I tried to go to University for CS but never quite got the hang of the math part. Instead I got a Certification in Computer Science from an apprenticeship (idk if that's the right Translation, in German we call it "Fachinformatiker für Anwendungsentwicklung") within 1.5 years and with extreme ease, because it was way less math-heavy and more focused on actual programming.

I stayed with the company that I did the apprenticeship with and got promoted from Junior to Regular within a year. I work exactly in the field and position I wanted to work in when I was going for the CS degree. In fact, I have the exact same responsibilities and the same pay as my colleagues with CS degrees. It might not be like that in every company, but it did work out for me.

Just for fun, I actually went back to Uni this semester to try and actually finish one or two math modules, but dropped out within 2 weeks because I was hopelessly incapable of even understanding the basic concepts lol

The most advanced math a typical developer needs is Fibonacci, and if you can't remember it someone will show you a cheat sheet.

If you enjoy the work you'll do well. There are a lot of different roles and specialties in CS with some of them being highly math focused and others quite divorced.

The field is incredibly broad. Choose a field or employer or project that's not doing that an you're fine.

I'd argue it's a bad career path overall. You will get laid off working as a dev, it's just how it works, and if you haven't managed a 10+ headcount by your mid 30's you will find yourself facing ever escalating ageism 35 on as an old man dev. It's not a field that generally professionally rewards experience beyond 5-ish years.