The only way out of this semantic quagmire is to realize that programming is math incarnate. Mathematics in the broadest sense is nothing but logic applied to axioms. You can come up with arbitrary axioms and apply logic to them and that's math! Sure the connotation of math are specific concepts that usually have some real world application, but that's not the only kind of math. Lots of times someone came up with a crazy math idea long before they realized the real world application (eg. complex numbers).
Until computers came along, math was entirely a theoretical pursuit. The universe may be described by math, but it's impossible to know whether it is actually defined by math or if we just fit the math to the universe. But programming is different, because for the first time we can take a mathematical idea from inside our heads and express it in a physical computer which executes it according to the logic we've defined.
When you look at it this way you realize that it's exceedingly silly to try to separate programming that requires math knowledge from programming that doesn't. I mean no, programming usually does not require the infinitesimal slice of mathematics known as 9th grade algebra, but it does require logical thinking which is the basis of all mathematics.
Until computers came along, math was entirely a theoretical pursuit. The universe may be described by math, but it's impossible to know whether it is actually defined by math or if we just fit the math to the universe. But programming is different, because for the first time we can take a mathematical idea from inside our heads and express it in a physical computer which executes it according to the logic we've defined.
When you look at it this way you realize that it's exceedingly silly to try to separate programming that requires math knowledge from programming that doesn't. I mean no, programming usually does not require the infinitesimal slice of mathematics known as 9th grade algebra, but it does require logical thinking which is the basis of all mathematics.