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I often used to do this to save myself from sinking feeling of how I made a bad choice and wasted precious time that I could never get back. But let's face it..

I often used to do this to save myself from sinking feeling of how I made a bad choice and wasted precious time that I could never get back. But let's face it... You can make this argument pretty much with any degree, let it be art, humanities, literature or whatever. But, no it didn't prepare you better than actual CS degree. All those things you described could be perfectly done as part of CS degree as well. Most good CS programs are much more than just code and equations and these days even includes bit of ethics and humanities. However, the point is that the time you could have spent in learning actual CS material, strengthening the foundation and acquiring advanced skills was instead spent in memorizing and rationalizing virtually unrelated minutia about largely outdated and mostly unverified beliefs. It's one thing if you loved this field and wanted to study anyway but quite another if you ended up there without knowing what you are getting in to. It's better to understand this so if someone comes to you for advice or if you are making these decisions for your child, you don't repeat the same mistakes again.

Engineering-MD 7y ago
I would say it prepared you differently. The argument is between specialisation and generalisation. It could be argued that a large proportion of a CS degree is useless for one particular application. Who cares about assembly when you do python all day? Or how does that computer graphics module help you with a back end server? Especially when most people have forgotten it when they did it 5,10, 20 years ago. Ah but one might argue there is transferable knowledge in these areas! Your knowledge of assembly helps you to know what’s actually happening to the computer and why that bug happened; or that algorithm for graphics is very similar to this one for a server. These are very valid arguments, and a similar thing is true for an even broader education. Deciphering ancient religious texts gave him a similar skill set as needed for programming, and potentially a different one to most other programmers. So much of life is learning how to reason in different ways, often they come in handy, and different experience leads to a diversity in thoughts, which gives an edge in solving new problems. I am very much a proponent of generalisation and then specialisation (along with variety in this path) for optimal performance.
methodover 7y ago
> instead spent in memorizing and rationalizing virtually unrelated minutia about largely outdated and mostly unverified beliefs. That’s not what my religious studies degree was about. It wasn’t expensive Sunday school. They didn’t teach apologetics. They taught scholarship, empiricism and critical inquiry. Philosophy and theology were taught from a historical/critical/contextual perspective, not a devotional/didactic one. I remember one asking a RELS professor about his internal religious beliefs once (in private) and got a stern talking to about how deeply inappropriate that was. I appreciate and agree with your comment generally, but your characterization of my degree is not factual.

Engineering-MD 7y ago

I would say it prepared you differently. The argument is between specialisation and generalisation. It could be argued that a large proportion of a CS degree is useless for one particular application. Who cares about assembly when you do python all day? Or how does that computer graphics module help you with a back end server? Especially when most people have forgotten it when they did it 5,10, 20 years ago. Ah but one might argue there is transferable knowledge in these areas! Your knowledge of assembly helps you to know what’s actually happening to the computer and why that bug happened; or that algorithm for graphics is very similar to this one for a server. These are very valid arguments, and a similar thing is true for an even broader education. Deciphering ancient religious texts gave him a similar skill set as needed for programming, and potentially a different one to most other programmers. So much of life is learning how to reason in different ways, often they come in handy, and different experience leads to a diversity in thoughts, which gives an edge in solving new problems. I am very much a proponent of generalisation and then specialisation (along with variety in this path) for optimal performance.

methodover 7y ago

> instead spent in memorizing and rationalizing virtually unrelated minutia about largely outdated and mostly unverified beliefs. That’s not what my religious studies degree was about. It wasn’t expensive Sunday school. They didn’t teach apologetics. They taught scholarship, empiricism and critical inquiry. Philosophy and theology were taught from a historical/critical/contextual perspective, not a devotional/didactic one. I remember one asking a RELS professor about his internal religious beliefs once (in private) and got a stern talking to about how deeply inappropriate that was. I appreciate and agree with your comment generally, but your characterization of my degree is not factual.