This whole article was poorly reasoned about, but this line in particular makes me cringe:
> To say that more good developers will be produced by swapping the arts for engineering is like saying that to produce great writers, we should double down on sentence diagraming.
In my computer science classes, sure we did algorithmic and mathematical work, but beyond that we had a huge number of creative projects. Many of our assignments were the cs equivalent of what people would find in a creative writing class. The fact that our work is expressed in code does not make it any less creative than writing poetry or drawing.
The more I think about this, the more I realize that even the data structures & algorithms classes are not at all like sentence diagramming. I doubt any writer would say that they became a better or more creative writer as a result of sentence diagramming. Most programmers, on the other hand, I presume would say the opposite about data structures & algorithms.
Diagramming sentences would be most akin to studying basic language syntax. Algorithms and data structures are orders of magnitude more complex. The best comp there might be studying themes, tropes and plot devices in literature - which would be something that makes you a better writer.
> To say that more good developers will be produced by swapping the arts for engineering is like saying that to produce great writers, we should double down on sentence diagraming.
In my computer science classes, sure we did algorithmic and mathematical work, but beyond that we had a huge number of creative projects. Many of our assignments were the cs equivalent of what people would find in a creative writing class. The fact that our work is expressed in code does not make it any less creative than writing poetry or drawing.
The more I think about this, the more I realize that even the data structures & algorithms classes are not at all like sentence diagramming. I doubt any writer would say that they became a better or more creative writer as a result of sentence diagramming. Most programmers, on the other hand, I presume would say the opposite about data structures & algorithms.