MATLAB vs. Python in industry at Operations Research SE contains the following statement:

I am a beginning PhD student in math, and I would like to focus on optimization. I am learning programming for the first time [...]

How common is this situation?

When I got my degrees in mathematics, computer programming courses were compulsory, and many math courses assumed that we already knew how to program. For example, in graph theory, we wrote programs to solve shortest-path problems; in optimization, we wrote programs to solve linear programming problems.

That was as an undergrad student, 45 years ago, using multi-million dollar computers. So I don't understand how people today, when computers are so ubiquitous, can make it to PhD level mathematics without ever being exposed to programming.

What happened?

MATLAB vs. Python in industry at Operations Research SE contains the following statement:

I am a beginning PhD student in math, and I would like to focus on optimization. I am learning programming for the first time [...]

How common is this situation?

When I got my degrees in mathematics, computer programming courses were compulsory, and many math courses assumed that we already knew how to program. For example, in graph theory, we wrote programs to solve shortest-path problems; in optimization, we wrote programs to solve linear programming problems; in statistics we used APL.

That was as an undergrad student, 45 years ago, using multi-million dollar computers. So I don't understand how people today, when computers are so ubiquitous, can make it to PhD level mathematics without ever being exposed to programming.

What happened?

optimization - MATLAB vs. Python in industry - Operations Research Stack Exchange contains this statement:

I am a beginning PhD student in math, and I would like to focus on optimization. I am learning programming for the first time, … .

How common is this situation?

When I got my degrees in mathematics, computer programming courses were compulsory, and many math courses assumed that we already knew how to program. (E.g. in graph theory, we wrote programs to solve shortest-path problems; in optimization, we wrote programs to solve linear programming problems.)

That was as an undergrad student, 45 years ago using multi-million dollar computers. So I don't understand how people today, when computers are so ubiquitous, can make it to PhD level mathematics without ever being exposed to programming.

What happened?

MATLAB vs. Python in industry at Operations Research SE contains the following statement:

I am a beginning PhD student in math, and I would like to focus on optimization. I am learning programming for the first time [...]

How common is this situation?

When I got my degrees in mathematics, computer programming courses were compulsory, and many math courses assumed that we already knew how to program. For example, in graph theory, we wrote programs to solve shortest-path problems; in optimization, we wrote programs to solve linear programming problems.

That was as an undergrad student, 45 years ago, using multi-million dollar computers. So I don't understand how people today, when computers are so ubiquitous, can make it to PhD level mathematics without ever being exposed to programming.

What happened?