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> I definitely feel that a background in the humanities has been able to give me insights into technical problems that people with purely technical background d

by irahul 15y ago

> I definitely feel that a background in the humanities has been able to give me insights into technical problems that people with purely technical background do not typically seem to have People with technical backgrounds have insights on things which you won't have when you are beginning. More often than not, insights originate from relevant background. Not trying to prove you wrong or anything, but can you quote one or two specific examples of these insights which you think people coming from technical background don't seem to have. > not to mention all the communication skills that come in handy In my experience, technical people have above average communication skills. I am talking communication skills - not social skills(how to be nice when you actually aren't). Technical people hone their communication skills the same way you do - they read and write a lot - blogs, mails, books etc. Sure they aren't going to go win a booker(neither do most of English majors; if we are talking literary achievement of that scale, you undergrad isn't going to be a significant impact) but as far as communication goes, that doesn't seem to be a problem. Take HN for example. There are a lot of people with purely technical background here. Do you think HN crowd has poorer communication skill compared to your non-technical crowd? > most people I've known are trained to think that interest in one completely excludes interest in the other. I don't know about people you know but I would rather read "Coders at work", GEB, "You must be joking, Mr Feynman" etc than Ancient Indian civilizations or romans contribution to science. I haven't been trained not to like it. I simply have no interest or use for it.

ohyes 15y ago
> More often than not, insights originate from relevant background. The really excellent insights come from people with seemingly irrelevant background who are making a connection that people with only the typical backgrounds wouldn't. Philosophy of science and philosophy of language have helped me immensely in computer science. As has use of deductive sorts of processes (philosophy is a lot like debugging). >Do you think HN crowd has poorer communication skill compared to your non-technical crowd? That's not really a good comparison. You would have to compare a randomly selected set of humanities majors against a randomly selected set of engineers. On average, I'd say both groups would lose to people on HN. GEB and the Feynman book are as much works of literature as they are technical pieces. GEB in particular requires knowledge of multiple realms, which is what makes it difficult.
- irahul 15y ago
  > The really excellent insights come from people with seemingly irrelevant background I highly doubt it. Can you quote me some example of these really excellent insights which came from people with irrelevant background? > As has use of deductive sorts of processes (philosophy is a lot like debugging). I still don't get it. deductive processes aren't something unique to philosophy. I studied Mathematical logic and induction more extensively than a philosophy major. The point you are making it is somehow philosohpy helps understand comp. sci. better. I fail to see how. > That's not really a good comparison. I don't have a fair survey at hand. From personal experience, good programmers have excellent communication skills. > GEB and the Feynman book are as much works of literature as they are technical pieces. That wasn't the point. The parent post said about technical people trained not to like non-technical stuff - I was just saying that I was forced to study History in high school an d I didn't like it at all. I don't have any use or interest in why did the opium war start or analyzing Shakespeare's writing - if I am going to read, it would be something which I find fascinating and/or useful. Technical people trained not to like non-technical stuff is non-sequitur.
  - ohyes 15y ago
    > I highly doubt it. Can you quote me some example of these really excellent insights which came from people with irrelevant background? You might be interested in Paul Feyerabend's 'Against Method,' it is a similar topic to this and a pleasant read. > I still don't get it. deductive processes aren't something unique to philosophy. I studied Mathematical logic and induction more extensively than a philosophy major. The point you are making it is somehow philosohpy helps understand comp. sci. better. I fail to see how. Philosophy (particularly analytic philosophy), has a specific method breaking down problems that you don't really see elsewhere. That doesn't mean it is necessarily 'better' than another course of study... it is just a tool that I find to be useful and relatively unique to me. It seems pretty obvious to me that you can't get by at CS without acquiring knowledge of CS. The point is that the diverse background is better than being one dimensional. Note that philosophy helps my programming, not necessarily my comp sci. > I don't have a fair survey at hand. From personal experience, good programmers have excellent communication skills. It could just as easily be generalized that good programmers are smart, and smart people are good at communicating.
Detrus 15y ago
>More often than not, insights originate from relevant background. Not trying to prove you wrong or anything, but can you quote one or two specific examples of these insights which you think people coming from technical background don't seem to have. https://github.com/jashkenas/ https://github.com/jashkenas/ was an English major I think, his JavaScript projects are one home run after another- Docco, Underscore, Backbone, CoffeeScript. http://www.flight404.com http://www.flight404.com still wouldn't call himself a proper programmer, since he writes crappy code, but through his mix of art and programming he popularized a new computer graphics trend. Processing, OpenFrameworks probably wouldn't be where they are today without him. Steve Jobs' famous example is when he took a typography course, learned the importance of proper text design. In a speech he said if he didn't include those insights in the Mac, PCs would not have them for decades, since they copied the Mac. He's probably right, programmers left to their own devices would have stuck with typography from terminals. The Flash movement was driven by programmers interested in art. Software engineering on its own is a pretty narrow interest. A surefire way for technological/human progress to get stuck is to focus on a single discipline. Chasing salaries in the hip disciplines makes sense for individuals but sucks for economies, imagine if we had more patent troll lawyers.
- irahul 15y ago
  Jeremy Ashkenas writes good code, and that doesn't have anything to do with his English Major. The discussion was about being from non-cs gives you some insights which cs doesn't, which is simple, plain wrong. A person from non-cs background can have insights about cs only when he have picked up the relevant background, at which point he isn't non-cs anymore. Look, I am not saying people who haven't majored in CS can't write good code. I am taking exception to the remark that you can do your undergrad in English, join a CS grad program and have insights about CS owing to your English program. That simply can't happen. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates et al. didn't finish college. That doesn't imply not finishing college gives you insight college doesn't.
  - Detrus 15y ago
    How do you come to the conclusion that a coder's projects have nothing to do with previous experience? Docco comes straight from literate programming and the English major is a major influence at least in project choice. It's not about CS insights, it's the non-CS insights at work here. Underscore is nothing new in CS, it's just well crafted, has a good API. How come similar projects by CS majors went nowhere? I think the ugly syntax did them in. Code quality probably isn't influenced by unrelated experience, but the decision making, what projects to choose, how extensive they should be, what's important, is heavily influenced by outside experience. Look at the example of startups. Often engineers who start them focus on cool technology, lose sight of the business, customer needs, can't come up with reasonable product ideas etc. They need guidance from people who ran a software business, made these mistakes and understood what's important. It's the same with any other additional discipline, if you major in English prior to programming you're better positioned to make a word processor or document startup. I think you'd also be better at designing clear APIs and readable code, documentation for others. So many CS-only majors are horrible there. If you majored in design, better at making design tools. Sure you can pick up skills after getting a CS a degree and the startup approach could give you that. But is that a better approach than majoring in art then picking up CS? When you have too many college grads coming into a field, taught similar curriculum and Java, you have narrow group think. A person that comes at CS from a different angle will make a bigger difference in CS than those grads. It's an outside perspective, helps in any field. Another example who isn't a CS major is Ryan Dahl, maker of Node.js. Lots of CS graybeards laugh at his naive efforts and spaghetti, but for some reason his project is popular. Perhaps those who weren't brainwashed by college CS tend to stand out? Let's do a study on that.

by irahul 15y ago

ohyes 15y ago

> More often than not, insights originate from relevant background. The really excellent insights come from people with seemingly irrelevant background who are making a connection that people with only the typical backgrounds wouldn't. Philosophy of science and philosophy of language have helped me immensely in computer science. As has use of deductive sorts of processes (philosophy is a lot like debugging). >Do you think HN crowd has poorer communication skill compared to your non-technical crowd? That's not really a good comparison. You would have to compare a randomly selected set of humanities majors against a randomly selected set of engineers. On average, I'd say both groups would lose to people on HN. GEB and the Feynman book are as much works of literature as they are technical pieces. GEB in particular requires knowledge of multiple realms, which is what makes it difficult.

irahul 15y ago
> The really excellent insights come from people with seemingly irrelevant background I highly doubt it. Can you quote me some example of these really excellent insights which came from people with irrelevant background? > As has use of deductive sorts of processes (philosophy is a lot like debugging). I still don't get it. deductive processes aren't something unique to philosophy. I studied Mathematical logic and induction more extensively than a philosophy major. The point you are making it is somehow philosohpy helps understand comp. sci. better. I fail to see how. > That's not really a good comparison. I don't have a fair survey at hand. From personal experience, good programmers have excellent communication skills. > GEB and the Feynman book are as much works of literature as they are technical pieces. That wasn't the point. The parent post said about technical people trained not to like non-technical stuff - I was just saying that I was forced to study History in high school an d I didn't like it at all. I don't have any use or interest in why did the opium war start or analyzing Shakespeare's writing - if I am going to read, it would be something which I find fascinating and/or useful. Technical people trained not to like non-technical stuff is non-sequitur.
- ohyes 15y ago
  > I highly doubt it. Can you quote me some example of these really excellent insights which came from people with irrelevant background? You might be interested in Paul Feyerabend's 'Against Method,' it is a similar topic to this and a pleasant read. > I still don't get it. deductive processes aren't something unique to philosophy. I studied Mathematical logic and induction more extensively than a philosophy major. The point you are making it is somehow philosohpy helps understand comp. sci. better. I fail to see how. Philosophy (particularly analytic philosophy), has a specific method breaking down problems that you don't really see elsewhere. That doesn't mean it is necessarily 'better' than another course of study... it is just a tool that I find to be useful and relatively unique to me. It seems pretty obvious to me that you can't get by at CS without acquiring knowledge of CS. The point is that the diverse background is better than being one dimensional. Note that philosophy helps my programming, not necessarily my comp sci. > I don't have a fair survey at hand. From personal experience, good programmers have excellent communication skills. It could just as easily be generalized that good programmers are smart, and smart people are good at communicating.

Detrus 15y ago

>More often than not, insights originate from relevant background. Not trying to prove you wrong or anything, but can you quote one or two specific examples of these insights which you think people coming from technical background don't seem to have. https://github.com/jashkenas/ https://github.com/jashkenas/ was an English major I think, his JavaScript projects are one home run after another- Docco, Underscore, Backbone, CoffeeScript. http://www.flight404.com http://www.flight404.com still wouldn't call himself a proper programmer, since he writes crappy code, but through his mix of art and programming he popularized a new computer graphics trend. Processing, OpenFrameworks probably wouldn't be where they are today without him. Steve Jobs' famous example is when he took a typography course, learned the importance of proper text design. In a speech he said if he didn't include those insights in the Mac, PCs would not have them for decades, since they copied the Mac. He's probably right, programmers left to their own devices would have stuck with typography from terminals. The Flash movement was driven by programmers interested in art. Software engineering on its own is a pretty narrow interest. A surefire way for technological/human progress to get stuck is to focus on a single discipline. Chasing salaries in the hip disciplines makes sense for individuals but sucks for economies, imagine if we had more patent troll lawyers.

irahul 15y ago
Jeremy Ashkenas writes good code, and that doesn't have anything to do with his English Major. The discussion was about being from non-cs gives you some insights which cs doesn't, which is simple, plain wrong. A person from non-cs background can have insights about cs only when he have picked up the relevant background, at which point he isn't non-cs anymore. Look, I am not saying people who haven't majored in CS can't write good code. I am taking exception to the remark that you can do your undergrad in English, join a CS grad program and have insights about CS owing to your English program. That simply can't happen. Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates et al. didn't finish college. That doesn't imply not finishing college gives you insight college doesn't.
- Detrus 15y ago
  How do you come to the conclusion that a coder's projects have nothing to do with previous experience? Docco comes straight from literate programming and the English major is a major influence at least in project choice. It's not about CS insights, it's the non-CS insights at work here. Underscore is nothing new in CS, it's just well crafted, has a good API. How come similar projects by CS majors went nowhere? I think the ugly syntax did them in. Code quality probably isn't influenced by unrelated experience, but the decision making, what projects to choose, how extensive they should be, what's important, is heavily influenced by outside experience. Look at the example of startups. Often engineers who start them focus on cool technology, lose sight of the business, customer needs, can't come up with reasonable product ideas etc. They need guidance from people who ran a software business, made these mistakes and understood what's important. It's the same with any other additional discipline, if you major in English prior to programming you're better positioned to make a word processor or document startup. I think you'd also be better at designing clear APIs and readable code, documentation for others. So many CS-only majors are horrible there. If you majored in design, better at making design tools. Sure you can pick up skills after getting a CS a degree and the startup approach could give you that. But is that a better approach than majoring in art then picking up CS? When you have too many college grads coming into a field, taught similar curriculum and Java, you have narrow group think. A person that comes at CS from a different angle will make a bigger difference in CS than those grads. It's an outside perspective, helps in any field. Another example who isn't a CS major is Ryan Dahl, maker of Node.js. Lots of CS graybeards laugh at his naive efforts and spaghetti, but for some reason his project is popular. Perhaps those who weren't brainwashed by college CS tend to stand out? Let's do a study on that.