>>Your average English programmer knows quite a bit about literature and history while your average American programmer barely goes beyond science fiction and the American Civil War.
Why do you think this is? Do you think it's BECAUSE they're kinda forced to study more varied curriculum at "university" level? Or is it maybe because outside the elite and just-sub-elite schools, the level of what is taught is pretty basic because (something I was told, no idea if it's true) American HS is completely untrustworthy and they don't have exam type qualifications on leaving those?
As to your clickbait question, I'm not sure if I'd force computer science on humantities but I'd SOOOO force some broadly understood biology on them. My original background is in very minorly "bio adjacent" discipline (30+ years ago) but I'm doing humanities for fun rn in my dotage and the ignorance about, for the lack of a better term, "actual science" is kinda mind blowing.
It's all bullshit. The same people who advocate for programmers learning literature overlap heavily with the people degrading old great works and fields as racist, white, et cetera. These classes / fields are less rigorous and self confident than they have ever been, and more focused on minority activism, but still try to take advantage of lagging public perception. So the people advocating for it are hypocritical and effectively advocating for something that probably doesn't exist. Granted, some advocates lean into it, arguing that technical types should take these courses to become more woke. At least they're honest, but forget that.
That's right, Bettina. So much of the system aims for adequacy rather than excellence. I think a lot of those Victorians and Edwardians made it with very little education.
>>Your average English programmer knows quite a bit about literature and history while your average American programmer barely goes beyond science fiction and the American Civil War.
Why do you think this is? Do you think it's BECAUSE they're kinda forced to study more varied curriculum at "university" level? Or is it maybe because outside the elite and just-sub-elite schools, the level of what is taught is pretty basic because (something I was told, no idea if it's true) American HS is completely untrustworthy and they don't have exam type qualifications on leaving those?
As to your clickbait question, I'm not sure if I'd force computer science on humantities but I'd SOOOO force some broadly understood biology on them. My original background is in very minorly "bio adjacent" discipline (30+ years ago) but I'm doing humanities for fun rn in my dotage and the ignorance about, for the lack of a better term, "actual science" is kinda mind blowing.
It's all bullshit. The same people who advocate for programmers learning literature overlap heavily with the people degrading old great works and fields as racist, white, et cetera. These classes / fields are less rigorous and self confident than they have ever been, and more focused on minority activism, but still try to take advantage of lagging public perception. So the people advocating for it are hypocritical and effectively advocating for something that probably doesn't exist. Granted, some advocates lean into it, arguing that technical types should take these courses to become more woke. At least they're honest, but forget that.
That's right, Bettina. So much of the system aims for adequacy rather than excellence. I think a lot of those Victorians and Edwardians made it with very little education.