Can English Majors Be Good Developers?

In every interview I had people pointed to the Philosophy part of my degree as a quaint curiousity and asked about it. I told of how I love writing and debate, and I think that effective communication is one of the most important and understated concepts in every scientific profession.

I love Computer Science but I really love writing and ethics[2] and conversation. I love communication and the art (and science) of effectively conveying ideas. I'd probably love advertising, to be honest.

If I had to do college all over again I'd probably try to do English/Philosophy/CS, with perhaps CS as the minor. I have enormous respect for liberal arts majors, but more-so than other majors, and I think this is very important, the value of humanities degrees are very much what you put into them. It didn't seem hard in my school at least to get a Phil/Communications/English degree compared to a STEM degree, but that in itself only meant that what you got out of a humanities degree was entirely based on your input, and there was a lot of input to be had. I definitely found humanities majors vastly more socially capable than the engineer majors, almost to an embarrassing degree.[3]

Anyway I do think that CS and any communication/writing-intensive major compliment each other grandly. It seems only natural, especially with the intersection of logic in Philosophy or clear composition in English. But I also think these majors compliment CS because I think the largest deficiency in every other CS and engineering grad I've met is that they have a hard time communicating their ideas and debating others effectively. English and Philosophy (and any writing in general) help with that. A lot, in my opinion.

I had 12 years of Catholic Schooling and they stressed the hell out of essay writing. Composition composition composition. Looking back, I feel that was a really important thing, and it made all of us better people, in terms of relating and communicating.

In fact, and I think this is the most important takeaway from my silly ramblings here, I think that writing and writing a lot makes you more a more empathetic person. I think that the more you have to put down your ideas to explain or persuade other people in a medium that you can look back on, the more you will have to consider and understand other points of view. Doubly so if you are required to write about topics that you may not be fanatic about. Anyone can write an argument about why, say, PHP sucks (or not) without getting much out of it for themselves, since they are just puking their zeal onto paper (or pixels) and probably don't give all too much thought to really convincing people. But having to consider things that you aren't already a true believer in takes a lot of nuance and brain-turning. I think, anyway.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/6oTix.jpg

[2] in the Aristotelian/Kant/Mill/Humanity's greater good/etc sense of the word, not the vague-ideas-gotten-by-parents-and-peers sense which is usually picked up on (see for instance almost the entire abortion debate)

[3] I'm quite the introvert and it took me a long time to overcome the social interaction thing that seemed to plague so many of my peers in college. I was supremely shy as a kid and tended to hide behind my mom whenever we went somewhere. My 8th grade class was just 21 people (two groups of 10 and 11), and my high school was just 500-600 people. Going in to college I was unused to, well, interaction.

In my freshman year of college it all hit me. My college (RPI) was known for being an introverted place and I met so many great people who almost literally never left their rooms. Great minds and personalities who were self-sequestered from the world.

It felt tragic sometimes. I met and found a lot of people wanted to meet people but had a great fear of simply being in public spaces more and exchanging pleasantries. Others still, and this was not an uncommon opinion, would disparage the idea of small talk as useless. It's funny but, of all places, once I came to college and met enough varied and amazing people I became vastly, vastly less shy. It just wasn't worth it to be shy when there were so many great people to meet.

Why? Physics is about relationships. Sure, there's math. But it's about understanding the big picture, and the relationships between the pieces. It's about how to convince the math to solve the physics problem.

I suspect the same thing is true for programming. People who randomly type until it compiles can get programming jobs. They can even do well at large corporations.

People who understand the relationships do less coding. But the coding they do is more likely to be correct.

I've met philosophy majors, english majors, biology majors, comp sci majors, and even people with no university level education - all were good even great coders. I majored in History and yet have done quite well as a software developer.

I took 2 years of Computer science - it was 2 years of wasted drivel that has helped me solve ZERO real world problems. Also, I hate math. Surprise, you don't need math to code. You need to solve problems at an applied level to be a successful coder - ANY intelligent person can do this if they enjoy actually using coding tools.

Anecdotal it may be, but I've never seen any advantage to hiring or working with Comp Sci grads over other disciplines. So yes, English Majors CAN be good developers.

;)