Do people actually claim haskell-ish math (i.e. abstract algebra type stuff) is just like school (highschool?) math.

If so, i wish i was in their high school. Sounds much more interesting than mine.

I wonder why is there is so much fear of math on HN, which is essentially a STEM community. I would expect it among literary types, but not here.

I think many people have a problem with mathematical notation, not maths itself. Mathematical notation is optimized for terseness and suitability for use on a whiteboard. Code has made great leaps in terms of readability and expressiveness compared to that, and is therefore more accessible to many people even when expressing the same concepts.

For an example see the comments on the map/reduce post from yesterday.

People overstate the connection between math and computer programming. Sure there are math heavy areas, but your average programmer isn't into them. At most programming typically involves the mildest amounts of whats in an intro to discrete math course.