Not. It's an extremely fundamental area of mathematics, necessary for really understanding any mathematical subject (including statistics, machine learning, signal processing etc) but it's not at all necessary for the vast majority of programming / software engineering tasks, and indeed you'll find excellent software engineers who haven't got a clue about linear algebra. I think the reason you see it discussed on HN is because many people here are interested in mathematics and that sort of theoretical way of thinking.
I don't mean to sound negative about it though. For example, the notions of abstraction and interface are very important in both maths and software.
I don't mean to sound negative about it though. For example, the notions of abstraction and interface are very important in both maths and software.