I personally have never understood that attitude. Dont get me wrong im not judging you. In my mind i just rather do something productive than idle on my phone, more so if there is even small change it will lead in to something better in the future and so far it has been paying off.
And from the employer side, if the shit hits the fan and there is layoffs, they will rather keep the dude that is effective and knows how to do things outside their job description, than the dude whose job has lots of downtime and they show bo enthuastism to doing other things.
I call bullshit.
If you were coding in the 80's i have hard time beliving you did not use math in Pascal or COBOL. And i remember needing lots of math with anything 3d in 2000
Also you cant state all mathematicians make horrible programmers because they often lack the "real programming side". Its not a boolean. They might be bad coders because they are bad at coding, not because they are mathematics. Its like saying all painters are bad writers. Both coding and math have a lot of overlapping qualitities and people who understand other have easier time learning other, but it does not mean they are inherently good or bad in the other one.