# Knowing about things is cheaper than knowing things DevFeed: [Knowing about things is cheaper than knowing things]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Hillel Wayne Published: 2026-05-28T16:03:01Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Newsletter feed for Hillel Wayne's Newsletter]() Topics: [math](), [Programming](), [Learning]() Tags: [learning](), [math](), [programming](), [writing]() ## AI overview The article argues that programmers benefit from broad exposure to many areas of mathematics and other knowledge, while only needing to study topics in depth when they are relevant to their domain. It distinguishes mathematics useful to all programmers from fields useful mainly to particular programmers, and recommends introductory resources and conference videos for broad learning. ## Source excerpt Short one this week because I'm way behind on book and conference prep. Last week a LinkedIn Influencer wrote about how math has nothing to do with programming, so I spite-wrote a rejoinder about how math is necessary to program (just try to write software without knowing arithmetic!) and man I forgot how much spite can fuel writing. Maybe I should go back to Twitter (absolutely not). But it got me thinking about the difference between "all programmers can benefit from learning math" and "all programmers need to learn math". I simultaneously believe three things: There is some math, like arithmetic (incl. arithmetic of booleans, sets, functions, etc), that is useful to all programmers. The remaining fields aren't useful to most programmers. Every programmer works in a domain where there is at least one branch of math that would benefit them to learn. (2) means that if get a group of 100 software engineers and teach them something like algebra or calculus, you can't expect it to be applicable for more than 3 or 5. Whereas if you teach something like shell scripting or regular expressions it'd be useful to at least, like, 50. So no field of math has a good RoI for the average programmer. (3) means that each of those 100 developers could, on their own, find a field of math that is useful to them. In order to do that, though, they need to roughly know what the fields are, what the big ideas are, and where they might be useful. It is more useful to teach them about many fields than to teach them any one specific field in-depth. I think that's generally true with most areas of knowledge! Getting basic exposure to something takes a lot less time and effort than learning it in-depth. If you're specifically trying to learn things that will be useful to your work1, you only want to go in-depth on topics you know will be helpful. But you won't know the topic is helpful (or even that it exists) unless you know the very basics already. So it makes sense to get broad exposure to