That's a very broad question, and specific answers cannot be given. It all depends. Most of all, it depends what programming do you consider? If it's a simple script that takes the input of a form and returns some HTML (after perhaps consulting a database), there isn't much skill involved, let alone math skills.

But if you are programming the automated pilot of an airplane, the robotic arm that allows a surgeon to perform an operation at a distance, a program that interprets the data from a seismologic experiment of an oil company, we are talking a totally different game. Then you do need skills, lots of skills, and math skills can be very useful.

As for question 2, I do believe that people with no education in Computer Science have a disadvantage. Again, for you garden variety programming, it hardly matters. But it does matter for more advance programming. Compare it with driving a car and knowledge of car mechanics. For your average commuter, it hardly matters whether you have knowledge of car mechanics. But if you look at the Formula-1 or NASCAR drivers, you'll see that most of them have quite a lot of knowledge of car mechanics.

As for question 3, about programming languages that are more friendly towards those who don't have a mathematical or computer science education, the classical answer is "COBOL".

Some languages that will appeal more to mathematical people that to others are, IMO, Lisp, Haskell, Fortran and SQL.

Abigail

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