Why I Was Wrong About Liberal-Arts Majors

[Barael]

It's a pretty facile article that embodies the ignorant but surprisingly common idea that coding = knowing one or more programming languages (whatever "knowing" means in this context). Yeah, basically anyone halfway smart can learn a programming language on their own. What they can't do on their own is come up with efficient data structures, programming paradigms, software architectures, security protocols and so and so forth.

[Deleted]

Maybe, but the TYPE of people that follow such a Major are still not the kind you would want to employ, unless you are running some millennial hipster company.

[Spectral]

A few things that I've learned and experienced over the last few years has caused me to update my general opinion of liberal arts majors. At my current workplace, I've worked with people from diverse educational backgrounds, and while my bias is to prefer the way scientists and engineers think, I've also been impressed by people with BAs in English, History, and other disciplines; much like the article says, these folks have learned to think rigorously as well and are more comfortable dealing with uncertainty than a lot of the more STEM-flavored backgrounds.

The other thing is more about hard evidence. I'll have to see if I can track the study down, but the bottom line is that people that study classic literature, linguistics, and others are just really smart on average. Different but overlapping skill-sets with their STEM brethren.

There's an irritating habit of STEM people (myself included) to look down on "soft" skills and I don't think it does good things for us.