78a7ecf065324604540ad3c41c3bb8fe1d084c50 ? Really ? Crap... that's the combination to my luggage.

I just helped a friend out with a ton of javascript animation for his webcomic (blatant plug: http://www.prequeladventure.com/ ), creating a 3d, semi-interactive environment, all in JS/CSS, and I ended up using a ton of math for it. Simple offset calculations, trig, parabolic arcs, exponential decay, and so on. Ended up giving up some things that would have required finding cubic roots of bezier curves because my math wasn't good enough.

But apart from that, I haven't used any serious math in a long time.

So, it depends... I think the more you rely on interacting or emulating "the real world", the more important math is.

> Couldn't you describe any star in such a fashion?

No.

For any range X there is a "youngest star" within that range. The reverse is not true.

Hunt down an oldish game called Colobot. Windows only game. Its a typical "world exploration" game but with one very interesting addition.

You can either control the myriad of robots manually, OR... program in a very C++-like language and let them "have at it".

The game encourages code re-use, so once you've coded a particular operation, you're encouraged to re-use it for subsequent levels.

One of the most fun coding experiences I've ever had.