Although the early years in the twenty-first century seem to be favoring the Lisp-school philosophy, I predict the balance of the century will belong to the Fortran-school programmers who are able to successfully apply mathematics to practical problems. It is tempting to declare that most programming problems “don’t need math”, but this is only true in the same sense that manufacturing, or supply-chain management, or baseball, “doesn’t need math”: advanced mathematics seems completely unnecessary to existing practitioners, but only until someone figures out that a particular mathematical concept is the right way to think about the problem at hand. After that, it is vital.

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