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I'm not qualified enough to comment on it. But I personally think Jeff is completely wrong. I'm a SDET (Test engineer) and am a history major. Couple of months back I asked people for math books related to computer science. I got some good feedback. I bought two books a)- What's mathematics b)- Discrete Maths by Susana App. I'm nowhere near a hardcore computer science student as I'm studying on my own. However, I've been able to solve recurrences, inductions and basic mathemtical proofs. I came across this beautiful function named "Ackerman function" and reading it was a pleasure. I don't take care of plants in my garden because it's necessary. I just do it for pleasure, literally. Same goes for maths though I'm pretty damm sure I will never able to do maths as good as Knuth but still. I've a long way to go. But I've ordered some books on proving theorems. I don't intend to become a hardcore mathematician but I would just like to get through this once (just for the sake of pleasure). Here is a personal story a)Once I finished basic Discrete Maths I was writing a command-line based twitter client for personal use and using their API recursion just came as a natural choice (it was so natural that I had to think of how I did it after seeing my code running--believe it or not) b)- I'm fairly confident (and cautious) when I write recursive code now. I'm , by all means, a very average programmer but I would like to think that I've improved a bit. I agree with Djikstra that learning your own language in depth is important for non-native speakers. Learning your language in depth widens your horizon and it creates clarity of thought. At least, I think it's important though I'm still a mediocre English speaker (yet).



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