I have seen programmers “battling” it out with really complex mathematical problems in their codes, particularly in the fields of game programming, physics programming, graphics programming, etc. I am a web developer, and I wonder if there are math concepts out there that I can use for web programming. I started web programming a year and 2 months ago, and all I have dealt with were complex analysis of systems, database queries, user interface designs, simple data structures, complex data manipulation and interpretation (regexes, parsing, etc) but I have not (yet) found a need for complex math.
So to repeat the question, are there mathematical concepts out there that can leverage my web development skills? If there are, what scenarios are do they come as an advantage or indispensable?
There’s no reason you can’t use your math brain cells today in a web app. You mention game, physics, and graphics as if these are exclusive of web programming. They’re not. There are quite a few online games implemented as web apps today, for example, which require non-trivial math (in Flash, Silverlight, or even JavaScript) to get the pixels in the right place on the screen, including 3D projections and transformations. Add HTML 5’s Canvas to the mix and things get really interesting.
The web programming mentality is often preoccupied with server configs, databases, and cache performance, but construction of the web UI front-end is also part of web programming. As soon as you’re responsible for placing pixels in front of the user (more than just text), you will need math. If those pixels need to move, you will need math.