I used calculus a lot in my mechanical engineering job.
As a programmer, not. But as a programmer, I use a different kind of math (such as 2s complement arithmetic, boolean logic, floating point math, vectors, graph math, etc.) all the time.
Knowing math has blocked many attempts by salesmen, contractors, bankers, etc., from ripping me off. If I didn't know math, I never would have even realized that my tailfeathers had been plucked. As for "anything bad would happen", bad things probably happened to you that you were not aware of.
An anecdote: years ago, it used to be popular to run 30 minute seminars on TV called (my version) "Get Rich In Real Estate Using Scams". I recall one that bragged about making a quick $10,000. I figured it was a con, and so watched the show carefully, noting each transaction. And yes, it did net a $10,000 score for the person. But how it worked was through a confusing combination of transactions meant to obfuscate what was actually happening. The key in it was getting your mark to accept a bond that would be worth $XXXX in the future while you got the $XXXX today. In essence, it was exploiting the mark's failure to understand the concept of current value vs future value. The beauty (if you could call it that) was there was nothing illegal about this.
With my math knowledge, it stunk from the outset, even though it took me a while to find the dead rat. Just like with my knowledge of physics, when it was posted on HN that electric cars were 90% efficient, that set me off immediately, and sure enough, there was a rat corpse in it. (The actual efficiency is 60% on a good day.) I was shocked at the well-educated people who bought that article hook, line, and stinker.
(The cake topper on that one was the author was a ski instructor!)
As a programmer, not. But as a programmer, I use a different kind of math (such as 2s complement arithmetic, boolean logic, floating point math, vectors, graph math, etc.) all the time.
Knowing math has blocked many attempts by salesmen, contractors, bankers, etc., from ripping me off. If I didn't know math, I never would have even realized that my tailfeathers had been plucked. As for "anything bad would happen", bad things probably happened to you that you were not aware of.
An anecdote: years ago, it used to be popular to run 30 minute seminars on TV called (my version) "Get Rich In Real Estate Using Scams". I recall one that bragged about making a quick $10,000. I figured it was a con, and so watched the show carefully, noting each transaction. And yes, it did net a $10,000 score for the person. But how it worked was through a confusing combination of transactions meant to obfuscate what was actually happening. The key in it was getting your mark to accept a bond that would be worth $XXXX in the future while you got the $XXXX today. In essence, it was exploiting the mark's failure to understand the concept of current value vs future value. The beauty (if you could call it that) was there was nothing illegal about this.
With my math knowledge, it stunk from the outset, even though it took me a while to find the dead rat. Just like with my knowledge of physics, when it was posted on HN that electric cars were 90% efficient, that set me off immediately, and sure enough, there was a rat corpse in it. (The actual efficiency is 60% on a good day.) I was shocked at the well-educated people who bought that article hook, line, and stinker.
(The cake topper on that one was the author was a ski instructor!)