Well, you're welcome to your opinion and thanks for sharing it. I think as someone who has both an engineering and a humanities education, I am the last person

Well, you're welcome to your opinion and thanks for sharing it. I think as someone who has both an engineering and a humanities education, I am the last person who would have an emotional stake one way or another. On the other hand, a cursory examination of his comments would show that every response to "the benefit of a humanities education is X" is met with a reaction with something of the form "engineering students can also do X" (meaning that they are physically capable of doing it). This reaction occurs regardless of the merits of the initial claim, and without a basic examination of its points. He then delves into what I can only call a petty dissection of the semantics of the argument. If I had said that a benefit of my education was the prominent role of public speaking and debate, no doubt that would immediately have been met by a predictable, worthless (in the literal sense of providing no value) rejoinder: CS students can debate also. This is a degenerate point and not at relevant to a serious discussion of what benefits are provided by a humanities education. That sort of criticism can be leveled at anything. This doesn't even address the fact that the way he has chosen to frame this conversation is totally absurd. "CS doesn't do abstract" is what he thinks people are saying, which would be a ridiculous statement to make. The terms of the debate don't allow for any sort of gradation or nuance -- this perspective can't admit that there is a qualitative difference in abstract reasoning between engineers and philosophy, while still allowing that both receive an education in it.