6 ms·

As a liberal arts major who is now a developer, this article makes me cringe incredibly hard. It's gut wrenching to see such vapid simplifications of both art a

• epberry 10y ago
  The absolute takedown of the author and the premise of the article followed by a one sentence admission that the idea might have value made me chuckle. I often try to write code which flows nicely to the eyes. For example, I'll structure single-file Python programs so that they are read bottom to top starting from __main__.
  • gengkev 10y ago
    Hmm. It seems that in languages such as C and Python, the bottom-to-top order is encouraged, because functions can't reference other functions that are defined below them. But because that ordering constraint doesn't apply for classes, I find myself going in the other direction for single-file Java programs where a containing class for methods is required.
    • shoo 10y ago
      > It seems that in languages such as C and Python, the bottom-to-top order is encouraged, because functions can't reference other functions that are defined below them. This is not true for Python. This is also not true for C if you forward declare the functions!
      • gengkev 10y ago
        In Python, I believe function declarations work dynamically, just as variable declarations do. When I'm writing Python scripts, I usually have some code at the global level that calls functions, which must then be above that code. (This is in contrast to a compiled language like C, or JavaScript, which hoists function and var declarations.) This can be worked around by stuffing everything into a main method and putting if __name__ == '__main__': main() at the bottom of the file (which I usually do anyway). But the mere requirement that you must remember to do so, just as you must remember to forward-declare functions in C, is still an incentive to work from the bottom of the file upwards.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • mercurial 10y ago
        Unfortunately, it's quite true for Ocaml, which is mildly annoying.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      It's a vestige from the time where compilers were working from disk and laying out your program 'declarations first' would speed up the compilation process considerably.
• sthielen 10y ago
  I agree. I studied literature in college (coincidentally, my thesis was on Woolf), and am currently working in a technical role at a startup. I've found incredible value from studying the humanities, especially literature. Some of the courses I took in college completely changed the way I view and understand the world. Literature has been a constant source of inspiration for me, and without doubt has made me a more whole, critical, and creative person--something that has had a marked effect on my career in startups (Caveat: It helps having grown up coding alongside this, I suppose). With that said, I found the author's examples to be terribly reductive. Studying liberal arts is not going to make you better at finding memory leaks or optimizing algorithms. Exposure to the humanities will, however, make you a more well-rounded human being and help you to contextualize and understand big-picture problems (vision, positioning, identity...the WHY behind the product) from a different (and, of course, not always better!) perspective than might typically be found at a company filled exclusively with STEM graduates. I agree with the headline and the spirit of the article, but it's too bad the author's defense of it doesn't stack up.
  • foxhedgehog 10y ago
    As another literature major who now works in a technical role, I can't help but notice that this comment and the one above it are among the best-written in this thread, nor can I forget all of the general panic that went into my nomination anytime that college programming groups had to produce something written along with our code. I smirk somewhat at the idea that Virginia Woolf has much to teach you about clean code. I do, however, think that writing is a very general-purpose cognitive skill, and that exposure to books like Mrs. Dalloway (and their mechanics) are generally good for your brain.
• dclowd9901 10y ago
  Way off topic, but I have a similar background -- have you felt compelled at this point to obtain a CS degree?
• deleted 10y ago
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• linhchi 10y ago
  Because stories like this sell to even the lowest audience target: the lazy but dream big ones. No matter how dumbed-down the tone, for me behind it always lies a figured out person doing smt that is definitely cool from the start. More than just selling to the lazy ones, it protects itself from being criticised by the competent ones. (You end your concern w an agreeing sentence: the point is valid). (It can do this because it's written by a cool guy sharing cool stuff). What i take from a story like this is that it's not abt CS, not abt woolf. It's basically: "how to become a perfect painter? Become a perfect person, then paint naturally"
• emodendroket 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat and found the claim that "coding is more creative than algorithmic" idiotic.