Math in programming

Here is a thoughtful article on the proper role of mathematics in hacking.

Math, done right (I am slowly beginning to understand), is semantics - the semantics of models.  The rest is just detail, and there's a great deal of attention paid to being sure your manipulations of models are correct, but essentially, "doing math" (or doing applied math, anyway) is just the creation of models.

As such, all of our current programming languages suck.  No, seriously!  They do!  This is where a declarative model language would shine - this is actually pretty close to what Haskell is, though, so probably I'm just reflecting my own bias.

I really need to learn me some Haskell.  And math.  I wish I knew where to start.