>>> My school basically expected you’d double major in math or CS, so they often didn’t teach a lot of the fundamental techniques you needed, assuming you knew it already.
Indeed, it was some decades ago, but at my college, there was substantial overlap between the requirements for the math and physics majors, to the point where just a few additional credits got you both. And it was a time when CS was still being taught in math departments at some colleges, so there were courses that you could take for either CS or math credit.
I actually came from the other direction, started as a math major and added physics, which I then studied in grad school.
In my view the affinity between physics and programming (and electronics) is no accident. Physics was computational before the computer age. We ran out of problems that could be solved in "closed" form, early in the 20th century. The Manhattan Project employed a staff of "computers" who performed calculations on mechanical calculators and punch card machines. Scientific programming predates the software industry. Today, virtually every scientific instrument is computerized, every experiment is automated. My PhD thesis experiment ran on thousands of lines of code.
Every physics student learned to program. What they didn't do is pay attention to turning us necessarily into good programmers. Since I didn't take any CS courses, I had to pick that stuff up on my own, and have continued working on improving my programming technique to this day.
Indeed, it was some decades ago, but at my college, there was substantial overlap between the requirements for the math and physics majors, to the point where just a few additional credits got you both. And it was a time when CS was still being taught in math departments at some colleges, so there were courses that you could take for either CS or math credit.
I actually came from the other direction, started as a math major and added physics, which I then studied in grad school.
In my view the affinity between physics and programming (and electronics) is no accident. Physics was computational before the computer age. We ran out of problems that could be solved in "closed" form, early in the 20th century. The Manhattan Project employed a staff of "computers" who performed calculations on mechanical calculators and punch card machines. Scientific programming predates the software industry. Today, virtually every scientific instrument is computerized, every experiment is automated. My PhD thesis experiment ran on thousands of lines of code.
Every physics student learned to program. What they didn't do is pay attention to turning us necessarily into good programmers. Since I didn't take any CS courses, I had to pick that stuff up on my own, and have continued working on improving my programming technique to this day.