Upper level education has always been just a paper indicating you are qualified for work. It's been bastardized by tons of unnecessary requirements, sure. Teachers also suck in a lot of cases. There were many times I had to take it upon myself to learn on my own. I'd say that should be fixed, but I'm not sure I have a solution either. Maybe they could quit worrying about their rainbow alphabet but even before that teachers sucked.
The Pythagorean theorem is an awful example though. If you asked me to present someone with a piece of paper indicating they are qualified for a ton of technical jobs, including programming, a basic understanding of trigonometry is a must. Yeah, sure, it might not get used in everything, but anything 3D is going to use it, and I'm not being asked to present someone with a certificate that they are good to work on a single specific programming project.
Not being familiar with UK testing, I looked up what's on the Maths test. It's pretty basic. Are we really suggesting degrading education to require less than this to pass? If it's not needed in the job then maybe the job shouldn't require passing of it.
I meant to mention vectors and 3D coordinates but forgot. That's something I struggled to grasp for a while until it just clicked. I would also put a basic understanding of computing into education. Do I really expect them to be able to configure an http server in a Linux command line? No. Might I teach that as a school exercise? Yes. I wouldn't test for it but I might test for basic command line things or some simple configuration type things.
I would budge on trig though, which I lump Pythagoras in to because in the end it's still just triangle math. It's very useful in 2D games where in a ton of cases you wouldn't bother with much more complicated math because a couple square roots is a ton fewer cycles. For example if you're wanting to get a the player velocity from a 2D movement vector. It's also how 3D works. There's a reason everything is triangles. Raycasting is in a lot of ways applied trigonometry. Outside of computers, engineers use it, surveyors are basically just trig calculators. I'm sure I could come up with more.
Blender artist of course is not going to use it. An engine programmer is not going to survive without it. I'm not trying to shit on things and a there's a ton of success that can be had without it. I've not touched trig working on my game in an existing engine yet. Someone has to create that engine though, and in this case I'm being asked to provide a paper that says someone is qualified to be a programmer.
I agree with that and that's why if I were to restructure education it would be pushed down quite a bit, where pre-teens all learn the basic requirements to exist, i.e. read/write, arithmetic, history, government and such. I'd take most of this out of schools entirely. Teenagers on it gets more and more specialized such that an accountant is not learning geometry and an engineer is not learning creative writing. Stringent barriers for entry though in a lot of things. We can't have everyone in a coddle-fest.
Programming would never lose math though, because I'd never want to hire one for a game that couldn't tell me how to get the speed of an object beyond "playerspeed = object.speed;". Be able to break it down at least a few layers even if you don't have to do it in practice, because that way I know you'd understand. I'd probably never be in a position to hire programmers anyway though, because I'd want to throw stuff at Javascript framework monkeys.
Upper level education has always been just a paper indicating you are qualified for work. It's been bastardized by tons of unnecessary requirements, sure. Teachers also suck in a lot of cases. There were many times I had to take it upon myself to learn on my own. I'd say that should be fixed, but I'm not sure I have a solution either. Maybe they could quit worrying about their rainbow alphabet but even before that teachers sucked.
The Pythagorean theorem is an awful example though. If you asked me to present someone with a piece of paper indicating they are qualified for a ton of technical jobs, including programming, a basic understanding of trigonometry is a must. Yeah, sure, it might not get used in everything, but anything 3D is going to use it, and I'm not being asked to present someone with a certificate that they are good to work on a single specific programming project.
Not being familiar with UK testing, I looked up what's on the Maths test. It's pretty basic. Are we really suggesting degrading education to require less than this to pass? If it's not needed in the job then maybe the job shouldn't require passing of it.
I meant to mention vectors and 3D coordinates but forgot. That's something I struggled to grasp for a while until it just clicked. I would also put a basic understanding of computing into education. Do I really expect them to be able to configure an http server in a Linux command line? No. Might I teach that as a school exercise? Yes. I wouldn't test for it but I might test for basic command line things or some simple configuration type things.
I would budge on trig though, which I lump Pythagoras in to because in the end it's still just triangle math. It's very useful in 2D games where in a ton of cases you wouldn't bother with much more complicated math because a couple square roots is a ton fewer cycles. For example if you're wanting to get a the player velocity from a 2D movement vector. It's also how 3D works. There's a reason everything is triangles. Raycasting is in a lot of ways applied trigonometry. Outside of computers, engineers use it, surveyors are basically just trig calculators. I'm sure I could come up with more.
Blender artist of course is not going to use it. An engine programmer is not going to survive without it. I'm not trying to shit on things and a there's a ton of success that can be had without it. I've not touched trig working on my game in an existing engine yet. Someone has to create that engine though, and in this case I'm being asked to provide a paper that says someone is qualified to be a programmer.
I agree with that and that's why if I were to restructure education it would be pushed down quite a bit, where pre-teens all learn the basic requirements to exist, i.e. read/write, arithmetic, history, government and such. I'd take most of this out of schools entirely. Teenagers on it gets more and more specialized such that an accountant is not learning geometry and an engineer is not learning creative writing. Stringent barriers for entry though in a lot of things. We can't have everyone in a coddle-fest.
Programming would never lose math though, because I'd never want to hire one for a game that couldn't tell me how to get the speed of an object beyond "playerspeed = object.speed;". Be able to break it down at least a few layers even if you don't have to do it in practice, because that way I know you'd understand. I'd probably never be in a position to hire programmers anyway though, because I'd want to throw stuff at Javascript framework monkeys.