I'm also a self-taught programmer and I find programming-logic
   seems to work better than other logics, even math. When I was
   going through pre-algebra, I'd already had BASIC (nowadays it
   would've been Python I suspect) and I was changing their
   equations in my head into a kind of pseudo BASIC, so I could
   watch the math as it was happening. It was the only way I could
   make sense of the weird math lingo. Geometry proofs pissed me
   off though. Never saw the point. Probably why I did poorly on
   Calculus... then again, I was a senior by then and stopped
   caring. smile emoticon