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Successful English major/developer here from the first boom. I'd say there's some natural advantages to English majors (aside from the "whatever degree" people
by lubujackson 14y ago
Successful English major/developer here from the first boom. I'd say there's some natural advantages to English majors (aside from the "whatever degree" people who just wanted to graduate) because reading and writing require a lot of the same deep concentration as programming. It also gives them a natural advantage in communication, via documentation or just explaining their line of reasoning. It might be different now, but in 1999 there weren't many colleges teaching HTML and web development, so everyone was learning this stuff on their own anyway. In general, I've found people from liberal arts backgrounds have a more well-rounded approach and (maybe because of survivorship bias) they are not as narrowly-focused as most Computer Science -> web developers.
- davimack 14y agoTotally agree (also a successful English major / developer from the first boom). A lot of what fascinated me was the underlying grammar and syntax of language and how, if you knew how to manipulate those symbols ("words") through the use of an appropriate tool (diagrams, but not the ones you remember from when you were a kid learning to write sentences) you could manipulate sentences almost like they were tree-structures - without changing the meaning. That said, to _succeed_ as a developer, I felt compelled to go out and get a Master's in Information Systems ... but that was about career success (nobody wanted an English Major to be their IT Project Manager, for some reason).