When were you first exposed to proof-writing, and when did you start getting comfortable with it?

My first proof course was a very elementary number theory course in college.

My first experience with proofs seems to be a bit different from what I hear from a lot of other people. I'm not particular clever or mathematically-gifted, but I am very methodical and detail-oriented, so proofs came very naturally to me. This was especially true at the early stages when the propositions you're proving are so simple that you can writing out everything very explicitly and it feels like nothing is left to chance or intuition. Every step can in an argument can be clearly justified by a definition or a theorem or a basic logical inference. My friends who were much better at math than me found these early stages of proof-writing to be overly tedious and boring, but I thought it was great.

The real challenge for me came when the proofs started to become so complicated that it became necessary to reason and write LESS formally. In Terence Tao's terms, it's was the transition to the post-rigorous stage that was a real struggle for me.

/r/math Thread