Do I suck at physics and engineering if I'm good at math but bad at programming?

2

2 Answers

Oddman Profile
Oddman answered
Not necessarily. "Bad at programming" can mean a variety of things.

If it means you have a hard time writing a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or performing a task, then you may want to be careful what sort of Physics or Engineering field you go into. If it means you don't fathom the intricacies of Microsoft's operating system or programming tools and the way they work, welcome to the (very large) club.

Engineering and Physics are fields that tend to have a very practical orientation. Mathematics is a field that tends to work with ideal or simplified models. Programming tends to deal with all of the messiness of the real world, as Engineering and Physics do. If you can't get your head around the fact that often the models don't explain everything, then Engineering or Physics may not be a good match for your talent.
Brady Profile
Brady answered
Engineers are some of the worst programmers I know.  Most likely the most complicated construct an engineer must build will automate calculations for them, this is pretty easy for even the most novice of programmers and even in the most complex languages.  You declare which variables are to be used and write out an equation perhaps gathering input beforehand.  In all likelihood an engineer will never in his career need to write a program with multiple modules and thus multiple thousands of lines of code, that work is left to computer scientists.

Answer Question

Anonymous