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All the hate on artsies ruined the article for me. If you haven’t trashed your computer while doing something questionable, then you’re not a computer scientis

All the hate on artsies ruined the article for me. If you haven’t trashed your computer while doing something questionable, then you’re not a computer scientist – you’re just an arts grad who didn’t get laid A CompSci grad is supposed to be able to do difficult things that arts grads simply can’t understand. This is exactly the type of biased, negative, and unproductive criticism that the HN community works hard to prevent and has been recently vocal in admonishing. I may be a little sensitive - I have both a double major BA and a Bachelors in Computer Science and my CS friends look insanely ignorant when they presume they know anything about the benefits/lacks of an Arts degree. Arts "teaches you to think" in ways that CS/Engineering students are never even exposed to (except for by some token arts requirements) - it teaches you have to think about people and the human condition. I would much rather have a CS grad help me start a company, but equally rather have an Arts grad run it (See Warren Bennis' On becoming a leader for a much better investigation into why Arts students make the best leaders [of human beings]). I'm not saying that Arts is better in any way - I'm just asking for mutual respect. No poli sci student is going around saying they can prove the amortized runtime of a skip list - if you're in CS please don't pretend you've had their education either. Your education also isn't any "harder" in any objective way - ODEs or building an OS in C is not any more difficult than wrapping your head around Aristotle or existentialist phenomenology, it really isn't. It's actually much easier to get an A in CS than Arts, but that's a bit of an aside. I realize that this was an article not a comment, and I don't intend to start a debate. I just think we need some mutual respect between the disciplines and there seems to be a latent "bash artsies" in some tech writing that really needs to be squashed - it's not helping anyone. [more to the point of the article: My subjective anecdotal evidence is that arts grads have a MUCH harder time getting hired post-grad (which makes sense considering they chose to learn fundamentals not practical skills) so they go either a) travelling b) to grad school c) to law school. This is a major skew, none of these people should be consider employed, but they don't contribute to the arts grads unemployment rate either]

jseliger 16y ago
Great comment. The false divide between arts and sciences has been with us an unpleasantly long time; if you haven't read C.P. Snow's _The Two Cultures_, find a copy. It was published in the 1950s, IIRC, yet it still resonates.
barrkel 16y ago
I think it's par for the course for the mentality in the City; what few interactions I've had were unpleasant. Makes me glad I work from home and commute to California a couple of times a year, rather than have to put up with it.
philwelch 16y ago
I have a BA too, so your comment is interesting to me even though I have a somewhat dissenting perspective. To begin with, "the arts" (defined as anything you can get a BA in) is a wide, wide field. At my university, a BA is often a less rigorous degree option in fields that also offer BS degrees. You can't talk about BA's generally--they range from various instances of "Identity Politics: The Major" to pretty tricky stuff, like philosophy, which at its highest levels is comparable to advanced mathematics. Philosophy has a lot of intellectual content that's difficult for people to grasp, because you're basically taking raw logic and using it to blow up fundamental parts of people's belief systems. Getting people to take the skeptical argument seriously is an ordeal in itself, much less coming up with intelligent responses to it. Even after you get past tricks like that, it's a rough slog reading philosophy. Analytic philosophy, which is exceptionally rigorous, is about as difficult to read as mathematics; other philosophy is even more difficult if it has any meaning at all. Philosophy actually exercises most of the same muscles as math and CS, in my experience; learning to think of counterexamples as you write general statements is a skill you pick up in all three contexts. Counterexamples in philosophy fill largely the same role as test cases in software development--any attempt to define "knowledge" in the past half century has had to contend with Gettier's famous counterexample (http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html) which sunk Plato's millennia-old definition. In terms of contemplating the human condition? If I had to manage actual people, I'd look for a psychology or anthropology grad, and both of those can be had as BS degrees. One of the coolest (and most useful!) things philosophy ever gave us was empiricism, and so far, psychologists and anthropologists are the ones applying empiricism to humans in the contexts most useful for something like running a company. But actually, I don't know if formal education helps at all with management. If I was going to hire a political leader with vast amounts of power, I sure as hell want someone who understands history. (And I'd hire a poli sci major to manage his campaign, naturally.)
ionfish 16y ago
This "two cultures" [1] attitude is, sadly, incredibly pervasive. The idea that there are two kinds of people, two kinds of education, and thus two kinds of careers—one in the arts, one in the sciences—is a product of irredeemable stupidity and must be resisted. Consider the following list of people, most of whom we should all be familiar with. - Aristotle was concerned with understanding the natural world; with logic and mathematics; and with ethics, how to live a good life, music, the theatre, and more. - Leibniz developed the calculus, symbolic reasoning, and ideas about computation. He also wrote about law, ethics, and religious disputes. - Bertrand Russell made major contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language and mind, as well as being a prominent public intellectual and peace campaigner. - Saul Kripke developed Kripke semantics for modal and intuitionistic logic, as well as making major contributions to the philosophy of language, mind, and epistemology and metaphysics. I'm sure everyone here can think of many more examples, and no doubt your personal interests will influence your selections (as mine obviously have). My point is that an interest in, and the ability to make a major contribution to the arts or sciences in no way precludes making a contribution to the other. Yes, writing a proof is different to building a web service, which in turn is different from writing a book on Spinoza or studying the family dynamics of drug addicts. But the classes of people who do these things are not disjoint. We live in a world of specialisation, but that doesn't mean we have to live in a world of separation; that we cannot have broad interests and broad capabilities. When I was a child I learned about the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, but I also read the Iliad. There's no contradiction there, so why do so many people subscribe to the idea that people who do the latter can't do the former, or vice versa? There is nothing contradictory in being able to write well, derive logical proofs, appreciate literature and disassemble a computer (or a car!). The call for mutual respect is appreciated, but surely we should demand more: a denial that this divide should exist in the first place. One small nitpick, about learning fundamentals rather than practical skills making it harder to get hired. Even assuming it to be true, I don't think it cuts at all cleanly across the Arts/Sciences divide. A good understanding of complexity classes is not something I would call practical, i.e. able to be applied directly to so-called "real world" problems. My guess would be that it might make one hireable, in that employers might value the kind of mind which can comprehend such things, but that the number of places hiring people to use that knowledge directly is probably extremely limited. The problem that arts students might be facing is more that their skills are hard to quantify than that they are more concerned with fundamentals. [1] The term "two cultures" comes from C.P. Snow's famous 1959 lecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
endtime 16y ago
I think you're taking the less charitable interpretation of this quote: >A CompSci grad is supposed to be able to do difficult things that arts grads simply can’t understand. I would except a CS grad to be able to know when to use an array and when to use a linked list, but I wouldn't expect a comp lit grad to. However, the comp lit grad should be able to contrast Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which I (a CS grad) sure couldn't.

jseliger 16y ago

Great comment. The false divide between arts and sciences has been with us an unpleasantly long time; if you haven't read C.P. Snow's _The Two Cultures_, find a copy. It was published in the 1950s, IIRC, yet it still resonates.

barrkel 16y ago

I think it's par for the course for the mentality in the City; what few interactions I've had were unpleasant. Makes me glad I work from home and commute to California a couple of times a year, rather than have to put up with it.

philwelch 16y ago

I have a BA too, so your comment is interesting to me even though I have a somewhat dissenting perspective. To begin with, "the arts" (defined as anything you can get a BA in) is a wide, wide field. At my university, a BA is often a less rigorous degree option in fields that also offer BS degrees. You can't talk about BA's generally--they range from various instances of "Identity Politics: The Major" to pretty tricky stuff, like philosophy, which at its highest levels is comparable to advanced mathematics. Philosophy has a lot of intellectual content that's difficult for people to grasp, because you're basically taking raw logic and using it to blow up fundamental parts of people's belief systems. Getting people to take the skeptical argument seriously is an ordeal in itself, much less coming up with intelligent responses to it. Even after you get past tricks like that, it's a rough slog reading philosophy. Analytic philosophy, which is exceptionally rigorous, is about as difficult to read as mathematics; other philosophy is even more difficult if it has any meaning at all. Philosophy actually exercises most of the same muscles as math and CS, in my experience; learning to think of counterexamples as you write general statements is a skill you pick up in all three contexts. Counterexamples in philosophy fill largely the same role as test cases in software development--any attempt to define "knowledge" in the past half century has had to contend with Gettier's famous counterexample (http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html) which sunk Plato's millennia-old definition. In terms of contemplating the human condition? If I had to manage actual people, I'd look for a psychology or anthropology grad, and both of those can be had as BS degrees. One of the coolest (and most useful!) things philosophy ever gave us was empiricism, and so far, psychologists and anthropologists are the ones applying empiricism to humans in the contexts most useful for something like running a company. But actually, I don't know if formal education helps at all with management. If I was going to hire a political leader with vast amounts of power, I sure as hell want someone who understands history. (And I'd hire a poli sci major to manage his campaign, naturally.)

ionfish 16y ago

This "two cultures" [1] attitude is, sadly, incredibly pervasive. The idea that there are two kinds of people, two kinds of education, and thus two kinds of careers—one in the arts, one in the sciences—is a product of irredeemable stupidity and must be resisted. Consider the following list of people, most of whom we should all be familiar with. - Aristotle was concerned with understanding the natural world; with logic and mathematics; and with ethics, how to live a good life, music, the theatre, and more. - Leibniz developed the calculus, symbolic reasoning, and ideas about computation. He also wrote about law, ethics, and religious disputes. - Bertrand Russell made major contributions to mathematical logic and the philosophy of language and mind, as well as being a prominent public intellectual and peace campaigner. - Saul Kripke developed Kripke semantics for modal and intuitionistic logic, as well as making major contributions to the philosophy of language, mind, and epistemology and metaphysics. I'm sure everyone here can think of many more examples, and no doubt your personal interests will influence your selections (as mine obviously have). My point is that an interest in, and the ability to make a major contribution to the arts or sciences in no way precludes making a contribution to the other. Yes, writing a proof is different to building a web service, which in turn is different from writing a book on Spinoza or studying the family dynamics of drug addicts. But the classes of people who do these things are not disjoint. We live in a world of specialisation, but that doesn't mean we have to live in a world of separation; that we cannot have broad interests and broad capabilities. When I was a child I learned about the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, but I also read the Iliad. There's no contradiction there, so why do so many people subscribe to the idea that people who do the latter can't do the former, or vice versa? There is nothing contradictory in being able to write well, derive logical proofs, appreciate literature and disassemble a computer (or a car!). The call for mutual respect is appreciated, but surely we should demand more: a denial that this divide should exist in the first place. One small nitpick, about learning fundamentals rather than practical skills making it harder to get hired. Even assuming it to be true, I don't think it cuts at all cleanly across the Arts/Sciences divide. A good understanding of complexity classes is not something I would call practical, i.e. able to be applied directly to so-called "real world" problems. My guess would be that it might make one hireable, in that employers might value the kind of mind which can comprehend such things, but that the number of places hiring people to use that knowledge directly is probably extremely limited. The problem that arts students might be facing is more that their skills are hard to quantify than that they are more concerned with fundamentals. [1] The term "two cultures" comes from C.P. Snow's famous 1959 lecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

endtime 16y ago

I think you're taking the less charitable interpretation of this quote: >A CompSci grad is supposed to be able to do difficult things that arts grads simply can’t understand. I would except a CS grad to be able to know when to use an array and when to use a linked list, but I wouldn't expect a comp lit grad to. However, the comp lit grad should be able to contrast Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which I (a CS grad) sure couldn't.