@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.)

@inthehands @stephstephking @skinnylatte as a CS major and software developer, I *always* advise people to put at least some of their time into the humanities. You don’t need a bachelor’s degree to learn to program, but a strong liberal arts foundation will benefit you across all aspects of your career.

Edit: and life, which, honestly, is more important. My life is better for having studied things beyond the skills I put on my resume.

@inthehands Really? Wow that's very surprising to me about CS majors.

I'm a blogger and writing for schoolwork always came very easily to me, but I definitely wouldn't say I wrote a lot in any of the jobs I've had, and the writing I do is technical writing, which is a very specific skillset that I don't think can really be improved upon by taking any English course that doesn't specialize in that specifically.

@inthehands @stephstephking @Flux I had a friend who, while doing her PhD, had to teach a few 100-level writing courses. I talked to her at one point and she was really enjoying it; the students were really engaged. I asked her again next semester, teaching the same course, and she was having a really difficult time; everything felt like pulling teeth. It was the same course. “What changed?”, I asked.

“It’s all engineering students this term.”

@inthehands @stephstephking

I agree with the sentiment but I remain unconvinced that formal education in English is the answer. I had my last English lesson when I was 16. Since then, I’ve written undergraduate and PhD dissertations, and coauthored a few dozen scientific papers. I’ve written over 150 articles and four books (with a fifth on the way), and even worked as a journalist (briefly). I’ve been paid to write over half a million words (not sure how many more), counting only things where I was paid directly for prose, not things where the writing was an additional output.

The main thing that makes you able to write well is practice. Posting on forums full of grammar nazis who will jump in and correct you, and where you’re trying to explain an idea clearly to people you’ve never met, is the best practice. You need people to reply that they don’t understand the point you’re trying to make and get you to restate it more clearly. This was good preparation for when I got the copy edited version of my first book back with at least one correction in every paragraph (the sense of satisfaction around 150 pages in where I found a whole page with no corrections was immense).

Taking more English classes will only help if they’re practical and make you write. When I was an excessively online undergrad, I got into the habit of writing a few thousand words of posts every day. That habit was the useful thing, but few places have the ability to get you there in formal education: how many writing classes have enough staff that they can read and give feedback on even a thousand words of student writing per student per day? Peer instruction is probably okay, but the Internet is right there.

@inthehands @stephstephking I mostly teach engineers and mathematicians. A minimum goal I have is that their writing does not become worse compared to high school due to lack of practice. With this, we succeed, yay!

I also regularly ask PhD students if they read and write in their free time. Many answer "No". And those are usually not good enough at expressing themselves.

@inthehands

Writing practise is only the tip of the iceberg. Communication as part of collaboration—to build things, achieve goals, and solve problems—involves so much more. How many humanities depts pay attention to that?

My humanities degree helped me learn how to read critically about literature and other forms of writing; about aesthetics, human experience, emotions; but not about physical reality and working relationships.

But every little bit helps, I guess.
@stephstephking

@inthehands
I always tell my PhD students, and postdocs as appropriate that the key thing I'll be teaching them is writing.

They're engineers...

(I'm one too, so one eyed leading the blind)

And as they usually protest, I try to get across that it's irrelevant you've made a world changing discovery if you can't communicate it *well*.
@stephstephking @cstross

@inthehands

I'm a Software Engineer with 30 years of industry experience ranging all the way from developing up to global head of development and I don't recognize this at all.

I'm fascinated by how differently we see this!

If software developers are spending their time writing I would claim the company they're working for is bad at using their expertise.

@stephstephking

@inthehands @stephstephking Well ... most places I've worked solve this using "we-don't-care" method.

Which is why one employer sent a tender requesting that a tool should have "doublet control" (duplicate checks). I got yelled at quite a lot for pointing this out.

Most seem to get on fine with ignorance being bliss.

@inthehands @stephstephking I very highly recommend Richard Lanham's "Revising Prose" https://thork.people.uic.edu/fair/RevisingProse.pdf

The book was intended to help undergrads write clearly and concisely as a foundation for later breaking rules intentionally to write with style. You can't write with style until you can write and think clearly. But for those not pursuing more sophisticated writing skill, the book is still invaluable for developing baseline writing skill.

And holy crap, does it let you absolutely shred crappy technical writing. Like the best books on writing, it's slim and engaging. If I were teaching, I'd require it regardless of the subject - it's extremely helpful.