It's absolutely insane to pretend most software engineers need to do any of these things. We're making billions of dollars in aggregate without knowing this stuff. Most people aren't writing their own data compression algorithms, and we sure as shit aren't writing cryptographic algorithms because we're told to leave that one to the experts (i.e., mathematicians).
I'm guessing 80% don't even know bit-field flags and never have to use them, despite them being relatively simple. It would also take someone moderately capable at understanding math less than an hour to "learn." I learned them when I was 13 because I fucked around with MUD codebases, and I don't think I am special for it.
I'm guessing 80% don't even know bit-field flags and never have to use them, despite them being relatively simple. It would also take someone moderately capable at understanding math less than an hour to "learn." I learned them when I was 13 because I fucked around with MUD codebases, and I don't think I am special for it.