Can English Majors Be Good Developers?

When I started back in the day before there were any computer science majors, I was surprised by the large number of musicians in the profession. There was something about music and programming that clicked together. If you remember the Los Altos Hills Marching Band, they were mostly programmers, although they were known more for their humor than their music.

The idea that "liberal arts are easy" comes from the grade inflation in many universities (specifically, the differential of inflation between LA and STEM) which actually gives misleading signals about peoples' chances in the job market. It's a lot harder to get a writing job than an entry-level programming job. If the grades were better market signals, English and history courses would be giving a lot more B's and C's, and people would stop thinking "I can't do math" after working their asses off for a B+.

I have a degree in both CS and English... so yes.

A lot of programming is trade work, like being a carpenter or a glass blower. Anyone can learn to do it with guidance and practice. You don't need a CS degree to write a good shell script, a CRUD web app, etc. Just the willingness to learn the tools and some fundamentals.

It's not until you get in to deeper stuff like system services development or internet plumbing that the CS degree becomes more necessary.

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.

When I was 18, my "secret" plan was to be a creative writer. I didn't tell my parents (who wanted me to focus on math) this and took a lot of math and, once I got into proof-based classes, loved it. So I majored in math, but also put a lot of effort (most outside of coursework) into creative writing, which was quite challenging in its own way.

My creative writing was hit-or-miss. I once got last place in a poetry slam, but that was a problem with delivery/performance rather than an issue with the writing. I did get good at creative writing, but probably not good enough (at least, not in time for the real world) to do it full-time. Ultimately, I'd say I failed (I was 18-22) because I didn't understand people at that age. Prose was no problem, but I sucked (back then) at actually communicating.

I think that my writing and game design experiences gave me a lot in terms of being a good programmer, however. I've built some good games, and some bad ones (that the world will never see, mercifully). The bad ones were instructive. Watching a design utterly fail because of too much complexity is good preparation for software, because 90% of the pain we experience is dealing with badly designed, over-complex cruft.

We need more competent communicators, by far. No question in my mind about that.