Paul Cantrell
I’m a software developer with a bunch of industry experience. I’m also a comp sci professor, and whenever a CS alum working in industry comes to talk to the students, I always like to ask, “What do you wish you’d taken more of in college?”
Almost without exception, they answer, “Writing.”
One of them said, “I do more writing at Google now than I did when I was in college.”
I am therefore begging, begging you to listen to @stephstephking: https://mstdn.social/@stephstephking/113336270193370876
Paul Cantrell
I suppose a link to my big old manifesto on liberal arts education is obligatory here: https://innig.net/teaching/liberal-arts-manifesto
Shriram Krishnamurthi
@inthehands @stephstephking I completely agree re. writing, but there are ways to teach writing without an English department. The average CS major may learn more from the "writing across the curriculum" model than from the Brönte's.
(Skin in the game: When it was smaller, I had my programming languages course designated a writing course, and a personally read and gave feedback on everything written. And boy did they need a lot.)
Paul Cantrell
@shriramk @stephstephking
I mean…yes, sure. (Mac also has a pretty good “writing across the curriculum” approach, with institutional support; much of my own most impactful writing training came from classes across the curriculum.)
That all seems to me a bit beside the point: the “English major are useless!” crowd is making an argument about what forms of learning are useful, not which departments house them.
Paul Cantrell
@chrisamaphone @shriramk @stephstephking
You do have a point there: viewing English as •primarily• a service dept for majors in other depts both threatens its funding and shortchanges the things the field does beyond teaching writing. (There’s a parallel pressure about whether math is mostly for the other sciences, or worthwhile because mathematics itself is worthwhile.)
chris martens
@shriramk @stephstephking @inthehands I don’t know that that’s true. these conversations are really about money, right? admin can still be convinced to dissolve a department (and corresponding degree programs) if they believe its main purpose is to serve other units
🔏 Matthias Wiesmann
@inthehands @stephstephking one misunderstanding I see is that in large coloration, you write a lot, but in corporate globish, not English. I’m not sure if English department are ready to teach that…
Paul Cantrell
@thias @stephstephking
Counterpoint: corporate globbish exists to obscure the fact that people can’t write or think clearly; clear writing and clear thinking can cut through it like a hot knife through butter. And English depts most certainly •are• ready to teach that!
Not always true, to be sure, but I really have seen this happen in industry: corporate babblers flocking to a well-expressed idea like moths to a light.
Paul Cantrell
@skylark13
Indeed, it’s often the case that second-language speakers have better command of a language’s formal written grammar than native speakers! It is perhaps easier to stick to those rules when they’re the only ones one knows in a given language.
Even more than grammar, however, what •really• gums up an org messy thinking: lack of critical examination, not having a point, inability to take multiple perspectives, inability to consider audience in communication….
Jean-Sébastien Guay
@inthehands @stephstephking I am a French-Canadian. English is my second language. It is super depressing to have to correct verb tenses or even spelling in a code review, especially when it's code written by a native English speaker. We wish they would write more documentation, but if they did it would probably be full of mistakes too. I don't blame them, they didn't have enough reading/writing classes early on. The same is true of French speakers, because of education system and texting...
Paul Cantrell
@skylark13
My only quibble with that is that people often use grammatical pedantry as (1) a heuristic for judging the intelligence of others and/or (2) a smokescreen for their own poor thought processes. It does nobody a favor in either case.
Jean-Sébastien Guay
@inthehands Sure, that is lacking too. But I hate that even the basics are not valued.
I often hear people say it's not useful to learn to write properly because you never write by hand anymore, and spell checkers are always available. Guess what, spell checkers are not always used, not always correct, autocorrect is often totally wrong, people don't even re-read their message before posting.
I pride myself on writing properly in both languages and it's seen as totally useless to some people.
Paul Cantrell
@skylark13
You didn’t! It’s just a thing about which I try to remain sensitive, being a person who can be pedantic and also a person who works with and teaches people with many different native languages, experiences, cognitive types, and gloriously varied kinds of minds.
Jean-Sébastien Guay
@inthehands Totally true. I try to be constructive in all cases. Sorry if I came across as pedantic myself.
I only express my frustration in reference to people who genuinely do not see the value in learning.
Paul Cantrell
@mkristensson @stephstephking @lisamelton
Broad education is a long-term investment with a slow but very large long-term payoff, both career-wise and human-being-wise!
Mark Kristensson
@inthehands @stephstephking @lisamelton I was a double major in college: CS and History. When it comes up, I’m always asked “why history? There’s no money in that.” True, but it gave me an opportunity to study abroad and it taught me how to write. Well, my writing has gotten me farther in my career than my coding
Paul Cantrell
@thias @stephstephking
Ah, I misread/misunderstood “globish” on the first pass: I took you to mean corporate gobbledeygook / business-speak, but I think you’re talking about English as a global lingua franca…?
That now understood, you may misunderstand what English depts teach. It’s not primarily grammar, and “pretty” isn’t the central idea at all. It has to do with clarity: not just of expression, but of •seeing•. Having a point matters in any language.
🔏 Matthias Wiesmann
@inthehands @stephstephking ignore the corporate aspect if you will, most people reading and writing globish are not native an don’t have the cultural bagage to understand any metaphor or any reference - and they don’t need to - so this has to go, same goes with vocabulary richness, pick one term and stick with it. The language needs to be as pretty as bulldozer, ie not at all.
Just admitting the language is not English but another related language is the first step.
Bynkii
@inthehands @stephstephking @markmorow at least half of my success in it is because I can write well. I can communicate my ideas to people who aren’t me or aren’t in tech.
Paul Cantrell
@bynkii @stephstephking @markmorow
Yes. Both the writing and the boundary-crossing aspect of that are •huge•. To be able to talk to somebody from a different discipline, in a different role, from a different culture or place of origin, etc etc never stops opening doors.
Christopher Pickslay
@inthehands @stephstephking I was an English major and have been a software engineer for almost 30 years. Close reading and literary analysis are also extremely valuable skills for software development.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.