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In this Discussion
- asimes March 2014
- dawnspectraa March 2014
Do I really need to be a hardcore math savvy to get the maximum potential?
Like, all the "known" people in this area of creative coding have, at least, a PhD in Computer Science or math, or similar. Right now I'm 19. I'm studying software engineering. I really love programming, but the programming I'm studying at school is boring! Do I really need to know advanced calculus and databases to be a creative coder? I don't hate math, in fact I'm reading some enjoyable math books totally NOT from my career (one is The Moment of Proof), and also I'm learning by myself many programming languages. But, I repeat, do I really need to have an ultra solid math/physics foundation to be really, really good? Really, I just prefer drawing or writing code than solving for x and stuff like that. I really like mathematics, but I like them in my own way, not in the way engineering schools teach them (or at least in mine).
Should I change of career? There's one called "Digital arts" that actually has some programming courses (you can check it out here (though it's in spanish, sorry!)): [http://www.ugto.mx/licenciaturas/por-entidad-académica/campus-irapuato-salamanca/artes-digitales ] But, like I already said, I feel worried that most creative coders of today were, at first, somehow of a data/computer scientist...
Comments
You don't need a PhD to be a creative coder. There is a tendency for creative coders to have a very good understanding of a few subjects that they write code for. Often they learn from the forum or online examples.
For example, in the Processing community things like object collisions, understanding matrix multiplication without the corresponding Processing functions (translate(), rotate(), etc.), and understanding vectors in 2D / 3D space are common problems that are important to know if you want to do visual programming.
Additionally people tend to delve into specialties like grid based automata, particle simulations, physics applied to graphical objects, simple flocking behaviors, etc. Although having a solid understanding of calculus or physics is useful for these subjects it is entirely possible to program them without knowing the subjects that well. You find some code online and an explanation then play with the code to make sense of it.
Personally I learned these things while in art school with the help of people on this forum and online tutorials. Later I started studying Computer Science as a graduate student (what I do currently) because I wanted to learn more. That being said, many of the sketches I make in Processing now would have still been understandable to myself before studying Computer Science.
Thanks for the reply :)