A response to “On higher education”

Due to an almost-incurable addiction to Hacker News and all-things-related to it, I stumbled upon an article talking about “higher education”. Since I tend to be a sucker for criticisms of academia, I clicked the link.

I was disappointed to find, however, that the article was not really about the academic world at all, and moreover it wasn’t really “on higher education”, so much as it was “why I don’t think people without degrees should be competing with me”.

And so, because of my most-recent bout with insomnia kicking in, and because this article thoroughly pissed me off, let me see if I can supply some (let’s call it) feedback.

The article seems to have been written under a few false premises, which guide the tone of the whole piece.

False Premise #1: There exists two groups “blue-collar” workers, and scientists/engineers.

Right off the bat, the author instills their wisdom with this quote:

Once again I remind you: the university is not a vocational school. Universities produce scientists and engineers, not blue-collar workers and technicians.

This premise is insane, and flatout incorrect. “Blue Collar” typically implies something along the lines of manual-labor, while scientists and engineers are considered intellectual pursuits, this dichotomy is malformed. My sister is an industrial engineer (graduating with a four-year degree) who used to work for Amazon, and nearly her entire day was spent walking around the assembly line managing workers. She made a salary of an engineer, easily identified as an engineer, but from an outside perspective, might have appeared to be “blue collar”.

One anecdote aside, it’s baffling to think that anyone could believe this is a good means to partition people. While the author says “There is nothing humiliating in the blue collar profession”, they very clearly do not believe this.

The writer seems genuinely annoyed that anyone who isn’t in a narrowly-and-arbitrarily defined scope of traditionally-educated would dare call themselves a programmer or engineer.

Oh yeah, and about programmers,

False Premise #2: Programmer means whatever I want it to mean in whatever context I want.

The line that prompted me to write this article, that got me really annoyed is as follows:

Only one thing, please do not call yourself a programmer, because a programmer is an engineer.

Oh, is that what a programmer is? That’s odd, because here’s what Webster’s says:

Definition of programmer

: one that programs: such as
a : a person who prepares and tests programs for devices (such as computers)

Let’s check dictionary.com:

noun
a person who writes code for computer programs.

The author seems to take issue with seemingly-unqualified people calling themselves programmers, as further exemplified here:

However, those who build doghouses usually are not called builders. On the other hand almost everyone now is called a programmer. A computer scientist who invents new algorithms; a navigation software developer at NASA; an expert in Assembler language who studies viruses; a schoolboy who makes HTML pages — all of them are programmers now.

OK, so from what I’m reading here, “programmer” doesn’t mean what the dictionaries say it means, and you can now dismiss anyone who labels themselves that way.

I wouldn’t call a schoolboy making HTML pages a programmer, since I don’t really view HTML as a programming language, but I would if he routinely wrote some JavaScript on top of that HTML to make it interactive, then yes, I would call him a programmer. Just because he might not be very good at it yet is somewhat irrelevant to the point.

By muddling the terms “programmer” and “engineer”, the author is making a conscious effort to poison the well, but even this premise is malformed because:

False Premise #3: OMG ENGINEERS WENT TO COLLEGE OR SOMETHING SO IF YOU DIDN’T YOU CAN’T BE ONE!!!!

Full disclosure, I do not have a bachelor’s degree, or even an associates degree, and yet here are the titles I’ve had (in order) since I’ve started working in this space:

1. Software Engineering Intern
2. Jr. Programmer
3. Jr. Java Programmer
4. Jr. Software Engineer
5. Application Developer
6. Research Scientist (University)
7. Software Engineer
8. Senior Software Engineer (promoted)

I should point out that I chose exactly zero of these titles. All of them were prescribed by my employers, and while I wasn’t qualified on-paper initially, I was able to briefly become a research scientist for a fairly prestigious university, as well as get promoted to the senior level at a later job. My current job is currently a senior-level at one of the big brand-name tech companies.

It’s incredibly silly to get worked up over titles, and I typically try pretty hard to avoid mentioning these things anywhere but my resume, but I feel that it’s worth mentioning, since if I weren’t a semi-capable ENGINEER, then I don’t think these companies would keep hiring me as one.

I personally love mathematical and computer-science theory. I have a bunch of textbooks that I read vociferously and most of my friends have gotten pretty sick of hearing about my latest adventures with type theory and lambda-calculus.

You can say I’m not a “real” engineer if you want, and for the most part I don’t care, but it comes off as a blatant No-True-Scotsman fallacy to define-away your detractors.

There is plenty more idiocy and malformed premises that I won’t bother going into, but this article rubbed me the wrong way.

It’s difficult enough to get over the inferiority complexes that come with being a dropout trying to compete with the big-boys, and having holier-than-thou buffoons telling me that all of the stuff I’ve worked hard learning with my own time, including a lot of theoretical math, doesn’t count simply because I don’t have the letters B.S. or M.S. or Ph.D. after my name is elitist horseshit.