What are the basics of physics that every programmer should know?

  • Thread starter Dave27
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In summary, every programmer should have a basic understanding of physics, as it is the foundation of many principles used in computer programming. This includes concepts such as motion, forces, energy, and electricity, which are essential in creating efficient and functional code. Additionally, knowledge of physics can aid in problem-solving and critical thinking skills, as well as help in designing and optimizing computer systems. Understanding the fundamentals of physics can greatly enhance a programmer's ability to create innovative and effective programs.
  • #1
Dave27
Hello, My name is david I'm 27 and I've never took physics on school or college. I have technician degree in computer and information technologies. My curiosity led me to learn a lot of stuff I wasn't supposed to when I was studying - like many programming languages apart from the only 2 they taught at my school - and I was always trying to invent new things and I would even write programs just for fun. I was mostly interested in programming video games, like a lot of kids do when they get into computer science / software engineering, which led me to learn about computer graphics and ultimately physics.

I wasn't really caught on physics until I had curiosity to find out how things work inside a computer, the electric phenomena and whatnot. Which was very recently (I graduated 3 years ago). Unfortunately, my background in physics is non existant, and even though I learned some calculus at "computer school" (which included limits, derivatives and integrals) I forgot most of it and never really found any applications through to my career.

At the end I decided to start with what would be considered to you as elementary physics or high school physics. Luckily, I have at least 4 to 6 hours a day of free time to study physics / math and I'm still not completely washed out on maths. I have decent background on algebra and even though I've never learned trigonometry or geometry at school I was good enough to understand the basics to work through all of the problems on this book "physics for dummies" (not sure if is allowed to post links so I wont)

So far is been easy, so easy I've started to look for harder problems in other books or even thinking problems on my own. Hopefully some of you guys will be kind to lend me a hand when I have doubts.

Thanks in advance.
 
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  • #2
Hola Dave! Welcome to PF!
 
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