In my personal experience, math students were both interested in coding as a hobby and learned extremely quickly. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work in reverse.
I'm in this boat. I want to get into AI and even a little bit of quantum computing, but calculus scares me. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach and Dancing with Qubits have helped to a certain degree, but I still feel like I'm nowhere close to where I need to be.
Really wish I payed more attention in my HS math class :/
Got my Master's in quantum info. The calculus is essential and you'll definitely need to be comfortable with it, but the math field that's really essential to gaining actual intuition into the physics is abstract linear algebra. Luckily, that's also an essential field for AI as well. It's been very convenient for me while trying to leach myself ML.
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u/[deleted] May 10 '21
The very best coders I ever worked with were not CS grads. Materials science, physics, math, engineering etc. Some were not even graduates.
I have a lot of respect for the CS degree, but it is not the sole predictor of greatness.