Ok I finally bought a book on calculus and before reading it I was expecting to be absolutely lost. I flunked high school algebra and had to take it again, but did well in geometry and trig. Recently and with my journey into 3D games I knew my math skills were getting better, but again I thought to myself - you can't teach yourself something you flunked - because you are the one who doesn't understand it.
How wrong I was. So far I've realized that all along in my computer programming exploits and game programming self-taught or self-researched solutions, I've been doing calculus the entire time. The problems in the book are actually quite simple or at least they are to me thus far.
So I'd like to encourage those here who feel deep down they don't have the math skills to be a programmer or a game programmer for that matter. I don't know why I didn't do well in high school and to speculate wouldn't help matters. But I do know, especially now, that your grades do not necessarily reflect your ability to understand problems or do problem solving. So if you aren't doing so well in college or in high school, take heart. There are enough books, sites, and sources now with the internet being so easy to access - you can probably teach yourself more in 1 year of internet research than you would get in a 1 year course. I'm not discounting school or education, but if you aren't doing well, it's not the end of the world.
If I can do it, there is definitely hope for others.