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But I've read that most programming really only involves addition, subtraction, multiplying and dividing. I can handle those just fine. Is that not true? I mean, I'm not a total idiot. I have a Bachelor's degree which means I passed college math classes. Just never liked it and not that good at it.

@amc depends on what you program but if you mainly want to build web app you could go on with that although I would at least consider watching some youtube channels of mit, stanford, harvard or berkley or any other university about the introductions into programming :)

I don't agree. You don't need to follow up on your math. There are many great math videos on YouTube of course, but it's not what you are going to do 99% of your time. If you want to dive into theory (just listen to it, no need to understand it all) I would recommend Arthur Benjamin.

However you can just use index instead of i, j is just because it looks like i when that is taken already. k you can use key and v you can use value. I have never come across n to be honest, but sounds like number or count might do it. I know from many people who prefer to use the full length instead of short variables names, to make it more readable. Both versions works and abbreviations are not always better.

@emilmoe That depends on your understanding of maths. If you're working in a project with multiple people - hailing from multiple backgrounds then you will see such naming conventions as n, i, x. I will also say that associating names to the variables just based on the first letter is arbitrary. n, i, x are all examples of the nth iteration, which could be interpreted as index, number of count but certainly not key or value.

Furthermore, whilst I agree abbreviations are not always better in this case they make the most sense. Consider the case (standard for loop):

let output = input[theNthIteration]
instead of
let ouput = input[n]

The latter, above, is much easier to read - rather than (for other programmers looking at this code) to try and decipher what theNthIteration is. Also, the more complex the for loops (nested), then that naming convention becomes even worse on all levels. When considering readability using n etc trumps anything else, every time. n only refers to an integer, i.e. the next step in the process and therefore doesn't require relatively complex naming conventions.

Finally, whilst certain types of programming aren't specifically math based, understanding more than just gcse maths (no offence meant to anyone) provides the programmer a more solid background which can be applied in multiple scenarios. For any programmer it should make sense to learn more math, at least common conventions and methodologies.

@amc tl;dr you can get by without understanding common math common conventions and methodologies but things could become difficult if you wanted to move away from just html and css or work with other developers.