The benefit of programming

This is a small story about having a “programming hat” in your closet ready to be worn.

I like math and I have great respect for every profession that involves it. Therefore I continuously try to keep me in exercise solving problems and recently I have found out about a beautiful website called Brilliant. It has a very well design that makes you wanting to spend hours there and proposes loads of exercises.

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I stumbled upon this particular exercises but I didn’t want to give up, I felt it was totally at my reach but I couldn’t find a closed solution so I decided to write a program to solve it (with my favorite programming language which, by the way, is python).

As soon as I started to formalize the problem and to develop equations that would constrain the solution I could see very clearly the calculation that would have brought me to the numerical solution.

I firmly believe that every project in STEM area should be accompanied by some code that wraps the idea up. Programming should be taught starting from the first year of college so to give every student the time to crystallize concepts and improve. I find this true also for inherently speculative and less practical subjects like mathematics and physics, especially the way they are taught in Italy. I always had passion for practical activity and programming gives you the power to actually create something that wasn’t existing before, pretty much as craftsmanship or gardening.