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I majored in Computer Science and English at school. I don't tell people about the English part so much. But I would argue that Language and Literature has been

I majored in Computer Science and English at school. I don't tell people about the English part so much. But I would argue that Language and Literature has been every bit as valuable to being a good programmer in a media age as Properties of Algorithms. That's a micro-symptom of the issue that's well expressed in this article.

grinich 16y ago
Chris Wanstrath, co-founder and CEO of GitHub, was also an English major.
- kingkilr 16y ago
  If you look at the Django core developers almost none are CS degrees, on the other hand Journalism, English, and Philosophy are all represented. I'm a CS student, however I don't care about my CS courses really, if you're passionate about programming (and some CS concepts) it's not terribly difficult to go far on your own, OTOH in life you rarely get the opportunity to study things like ethics, bioethics, or War in Afghanistan in an environment that seeks to further debate, discussion, and analysis.
baddox 16y ago
I find that hard to believe. What from your Language and Literature studies have been valuable to you as a programmer?
- kemayo 16y ago
  The ability to communicate well, especially in writing, is important unless all you ever do as a programmer is work alone, never interacting with others or contributing to them. You'll use writing skills to communicate your ideas to your peers and management, and to document your code coherently. An English degree will do more to teach you about communication than a Comp. Sci. degree. Unless you go on to graduate-level work, in which case you'll probably learn the art of writing completely incomprehensible literary criticism. (e.g. How To Deconstruct Almost Anything: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html )
  - billswift 16y ago
    Anything that requires a lot of writing would probably do that - you would likely have been as well off taking history. Writing is a skill - the best way to improve your writing is to write, a lot, and hopefully have it criticized by competent writers.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    You can learn to write well without learning it in school, though, and you can learn to write well in school without studying English. Getting into arguments on the internet, for instance, is a usable way to improve your writing ability. If you don't get your points across clearly, people will misunderstand you and flame you, which is both more immediate and more incentivizing than writing class papers and having them graded. Then you learn to anticipate how people will respond to how you write things and how to get your points across better. But even in school, if you take something you're interested in that requires a lot of writing, like philosophy or history, then you get practice writing about something you care about, often in a certain style which is useful later. History, supposedly, is great for learning how to pull together different facts into a coherent picture while philosophy, in my experience, is good for learning how to write about tricky subjects clearly and logically. If you enjoy writing about whatever people in English classes are assigned to write about, it may be worthwhile. Your school was probably better than mine--I've known more than one English major who was a terrible writer.
    - kemayo 16y ago
      I entirely agree with you. Going to school is far from the only way to learn about a subject, especially if you're just doing it because you feel that it's what you should be doing. If you're just putting in the hours because you think you need it to get a job, you're probably not going to get much benefit. Ideally this would result in you not getting the degree... but that's apparently an unpopular position. Ultimately it comes down to practice. A humanities degree at a decent-ish college should force you to get that practice at communicating in English in order to graduate. Conversely, a science degree should force you to learn a lot about how to communicate in the specialist terminology of your discipline. But going out and spending four years starting a business would probably be at least as good as both of these, if you're motivated.

grinich 16y ago

Chris Wanstrath, co-founder and CEO of GitHub, was also an English major.

kingkilr 16y ago
If you look at the Django core developers almost none are CS degrees, on the other hand Journalism, English, and Philosophy are all represented. I'm a CS student, however I don't care about my CS courses really, if you're passionate about programming (and some CS concepts) it's not terribly difficult to go far on your own, OTOH in life you rarely get the opportunity to study things like ethics, bioethics, or War in Afghanistan in an environment that seeks to further debate, discussion, and analysis.

baddox 16y ago

I find that hard to believe. What from your Language and Literature studies have been valuable to you as a programmer?

kemayo 16y ago
The ability to communicate well, especially in writing, is important unless all you ever do as a programmer is work alone, never interacting with others or contributing to them. You'll use writing skills to communicate your ideas to your peers and management, and to document your code coherently. An English degree will do more to teach you about communication than a Comp. Sci. degree. Unless you go on to graduate-level work, in which case you'll probably learn the art of writing completely incomprehensible literary criticism. (e.g. How To Deconstruct Almost Anything: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html )
- billswift 16y ago
  Anything that requires a lot of writing would probably do that - you would likely have been as well off taking history. Writing is a skill - the best way to improve your writing is to write, a lot, and hopefully have it criticized by competent writers.
- philwelch 16y ago
  You can learn to write well without learning it in school, though, and you can learn to write well in school without studying English. Getting into arguments on the internet, for instance, is a usable way to improve your writing ability. If you don't get your points across clearly, people will misunderstand you and flame you, which is both more immediate and more incentivizing than writing class papers and having them graded. Then you learn to anticipate how people will respond to how you write things and how to get your points across better. But even in school, if you take something you're interested in that requires a lot of writing, like philosophy or history, then you get practice writing about something you care about, often in a certain style which is useful later. History, supposedly, is great for learning how to pull together different facts into a coherent picture while philosophy, in my experience, is good for learning how to write about tricky subjects clearly and logically. If you enjoy writing about whatever people in English classes are assigned to write about, it may be worthwhile. Your school was probably better than mine--I've known more than one English major who was a terrible writer.
  - kemayo 16y ago
    I entirely agree with you. Going to school is far from the only way to learn about a subject, especially if you're just doing it because you feel that it's what you should be doing. If you're just putting in the hours because you think you need it to get a job, you're probably not going to get much benefit. Ideally this would result in you not getting the degree... but that's apparently an unpopular position. Ultimately it comes down to practice. A humanities degree at a decent-ish college should force you to get that practice at communicating in English in order to graduate. Conversely, a science degree should force you to learn a lot about how to communicate in the specialist terminology of your discipline. But going out and spending four years starting a business would probably be at least as good as both of these, if you're motivated.