Which classes are most useful?
Ben Halpern
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Which non-computer science degrees apply to skills needed for a career in software development?
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Oldest comments (48)
Degrees regarding knowledge on empathy, conversation & communication — They’re pillars for developers who want to excel at their job. Communication is simply so important!
As someone with a Bachelor degree in English, I've become the go to guy in any development job for presentations, proposals, and communication. I can convey so much more to non-technical staff in ways they understand than I would otherwise.
It’s a skill often overlooked, yet such a cornerstone. I’ve been reading and writing blog posts so I can practice my communication skills! In result, I’m now able to express myself in a more concise, clearer way.
I had an English major manager for a few years. He was great.
Agreed. However, In other third world countries, I have to communicate with other people with different languages at different times. I'm so grateful for them to adjust my inexperienced communication skills.
As a native language speaker, I can empathise with you. Language barriers can seem daunting, but if anything, they help us simplify our vocabulary so that it can be understood by everyone.
I think it depends a lot on what you're looking to achieve in your career.
My degree is in Economics, a bit of Business as well.
The business & marketing side of it helped a lot with entrepreneurial initiatives, which is my main driver in tech.
The economics & statistics side of my course provided a basis for wrapping my head around machine learning.
Years ago I developed an autonomous software to track corporate investment announcements on the web. Kind of "Tesla is opening a new manufacturing facility in Germany". I extracted the data using NLP and organize info in a searchable database with company name, HQ address, target country, type of investment, etc. I sold this info to people interested in it.
Having an economics background was key to this experience. But it might be useless to most developers...
Math? Just by seeing the amount of math undergrads aiming for computer science graduate degree.
Patience!
I think any class that makes you problem solve. My degree is in Lighting, and with it, I've learned different ways to approach problems. It's also taught me that looking at the whole picture is sometimes a good way to see a solution that will work.
Lighting... That's fascinating.
Studied theatre in school as my passion, and took a few computer science classes throughout the 4 years. I have to say that the theatre degree taught me how to communicate openly and how to problem-solve creatively.
Knowledge is important. But there is human skill more valuable to get than a career filled with many recognizations. I'm android developer student and my knowledge is pretty good, but I have to learn a lot of conversation skills to share my opinions and the university has done a good job with me in this affaire.
Important subjects like programming languages should be valuable when you search for useful classes. Math is important, but I believe that Logic is more important than math.
I have a bachelor's of Law. I'm not sure which classes can be helpful for a software dev but I'm quite sure my bachelor helped me in nothing.
From my personal experience as a History major, I've absolutely benefited from learning both the ability to research efficiently, and to write concisely but descriptively.
Business and marketing will help. Even if you never have to do them, it will help with grocking the bigger picture.
I have a bachelor of commerce and it's been a real differentiator for me. I have training in marketing, finance, economics, management, accounting, business law, risk management, negotiating, HR, etc. I can fit in with both business types and the technical people (and translate seamlessly for each group).
Technology is something that spans all fields and can benefit from expertise of all types. I've found my theater experience to be extremely valuable, as well as philosophy and visual art.
Theater and visual art and in communicating and collaboration, while philosophy helps with what's important to communicate.
Psych classes! After having spent a full year before graduating taking Psychology/Cognitive Science classes before transitioning to Computer Science, they helped improve me as a person and a friend.
I would say once I got to the upper-division classes in Psychology, it really pushed you to work with others and collaborate on interesting topics dealing emotion, awareness, the brain, etc. Through many of the classes, they value respect and careness for classmates, and it helped set a tone in our meetings which would help make sure it was a safe and open space to share our thoughts when doing group work. These classes made me confident in being honest to others about how I feel, what's going through my mind, and opening me up to not being ashamed of the mental issues I faced myself, among other things. So I would 100% say Psychology/Cognitive Science classes, because in those classes and groups, you felt the care of your classmates which is something I often missed during my Computer Science courses, but it helped me become a better teammate and friend to others.
Business skills coupled with strong communication rank high for me. Especially when you are freelancing. One more thing and it's not really a degree but a skill to master is tolerance and empathy. This comes in handy when dealing with difficult clients.
Agree with this, having done a short course on philosophy.
There are certain 'cults' in philosophy that give it a bad rap and make it seem impractical and useless. But amidst the 90% of garbage, I found that 10% of gold that genuinely improved my life and my work.
Practices like thinking abstractly, thinking deeply, reasoning, constructing logical arguments and synthesising knowledge from different fields have been very useful in my programming work and career.
Any degree where you learned to handle frustration and suffering
Yeah, I was thinking that while my BA is helpful enough, what has really made me better at this stuff is being a parent. When I used to play around with coding I would give up easily. Now I'm able to accomplish a lot more because I am ok with things being hard and uncomfortable and I understand what being committed to something involves. If only that kind of background were actually seen as a plus on a resume...
Fully agree with you, parenting should be seen as a plus on a dev resume.
Actually, if you or someone else feel like it, I would love to read such an article:
How parenting makes me a better programmer
That actually crossed my mind when I made the first comment, I can write one!
Please do!
My degree is in Geography and Environmental Sciences with years lived in Architecture. Someone said building blocks? in Architecture, we are really building with blocks. The mental process for me is the same. Like with Geography, I am mostly a space thinker, I visualize in 3D. It's perfect to "see" the links, the connections, the networks of data.
Like it has been said before, I believe that the most important skill in software development is logical thinking, just before the ability to learn new skills quickly. Any classes could help with that.