What is the most pointless and useless subject you have studied
| Someone actually sat down and thought "yes! Software engineers need to know about accounting and geography!" |
Actually that seems completely correct, knowledge in those two areas seems quite crucial for doing any serious work.
The question is, should you **study** these subjects in a course? I mean, do we want to waste our time in university with a course which can be summarized as: "look things up in wikipedia when you need to know them/want to broaden your horizons/entertain yourself"?
This is one of the reasons the circle question is terrible: if you want to know uses of cirlces, their history in mathematics, etc., all you need to do is go to wikipedia. However, practical trig skills is something that is hard to pick off from a encyclopedia-style page.
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Having worked either as an accountant or in a accounting firm analyzing financial data for 13 years I believe I have an informed opinion.
Accounting is useless. A 400 year old profession for the people who like to follow and memorize rules where uniformity is more important than accurate information. Don't believe me than speak to any economist.
I wish I had studied something I liked when I was in school but I thought it would be smarter to study something which guaranteed a job at graduation. I now have a good paying job doing stupid for stupid people.
The pay is good and there is always plenty of work.
Accounting is useless. A 400 year old profession for the people who like to follow and memorize rules where uniformity is more important than accurate information. Don't believe me than speak to any economist.
I wish I had studied something I liked when I was in school but I thought it would be smarter to study something which guaranteed a job at graduation. I now have a good paying job doing stupid for stupid people.
The pay is good and there is always plenty of work.
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I, quite honestly, don't think geography is crucial for a software developer. Perhaps if it picked one's curiosity, which it generally doesn't it seems. Frankly, I still don't understand why I needed to learn about plate tectonics, or how certain rocks or minerals are formed from the high pressure and heat of a volcano. What difference did it make that I learned of the pyramids in Egypt or the fact that there's a big bridge in San Francisco?
That said, we also learned about how we inhabit the Earth and the affect we have on animals and plant life. I think this is important because it's something that we have an effect on that we need education in order to understand.
But do you understand how one seems a little more important than the other? Or why one might get demotivated when learning about something that has seemingly no value in current or later life, without even being of your interest?
EDIT: I used to ask teacher's a question that frustrated them a lot, "Why are we learning this?"
This was frustrating presumably because it's not obvious. That question is a lot more important than some people take for granted. Sadly, I was mostly answered with, "Because I said so".
That said, we also learned about how we inhabit the Earth and the affect we have on animals and plant life. I think this is important because it's something that we have an effect on that we need education in order to understand.
But do you understand how one seems a little more important than the other? Or why one might get demotivated when learning about something that has seemingly no value in current or later life, without even being of your interest?
EDIT: I used to ask teacher's a question that frustrated them a lot, "Why are we learning this?"
This was frustrating presumably because it's not obvious. That question is a lot more important than some people take for granted. Sadly, I was mostly answered with, "Because I said so".
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| I, quite honestly, don't think geography is crucial for a software developer. |
Nobody said it was. The original question was "What is the most pointless and useless subject you have studied". To claim that geography is useless seems silly. I don't use a lathe, but I wouldn't say that the lathe is a useless machine.
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Tition did:
Did I misunderstand?
| Actually that seems completely correct, knowledge in those two areas seems quite crucial for doing any serious work. |
Basic geography helps me participate in office conversations with colleagues when talking about their home countries or their recent or planned travel (you're from xxx? did you live close to the beach? Did you go hiking in the mountains often?).
But if some google maps competitor, oil research startup, international tourism website, or smart missile military contractor poaches me tomorrow, it might become relevant to the job.
Every business in the world needs programmers, and even though everyone says business knowledge not required, it helps a great deal.
But if some google maps competitor, oil research startup, international tourism website, or smart missile military contractor poaches me tomorrow, it might become relevant to the job.
Every business in the world needs programmers, and even though everyone says business knowledge not required, it helps a great deal.
| Tition did: Actually that seems completely correct, knowledge in those two areas seems quite crucial for doing any serious work. Did I misunderstand? |
No you didn't. For geography, several examples come to mind, and I am sure there are many more, probably more subtle. For example, I wouldn't want to work with a programmer who doesn't know the continents, in which continent are most (at least, large) countries located, what is a time zone. Yes, these qualify in my book as "geography".
Yes, these are important - for example, what if you get a web hit from china? From North Korea?
The importance of time zones - well, that goes without saying. I think time zones are officially part of geography are they not? What about daylight savings time - important or not if you are running a web site?
Did you know China has one time zone?
For accounting: adding your revenue and subtracting your expenses IS accounting. Probably not studied in university, but still (a)counts. I won't go into details why that's important to me, or why I wouldn't want to work with people who have no basic sense of it.
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| Actually that seems completely correct, knowledge in those two areas seems quite crucial for doing any serious work. |
| To claim that geography is useless seems silly. I don't use a lathe, but I wouldn't say that the lathe is a useless machine. |
Yes, the lathe is a useful machine, but I would not buy a lathe for any price because I have no use for it. Likewise, I can't use "work" to justify spending any amount of time learning, say, archeology because I know that the probability that I will ever use it is too small to justify the expense. We just don't have time to learn everything that could conceivable be useful in some situation. Our lives are finite.
| But if some google maps competitor, oil research startup, international tourism website, or smart missile military contractor poaches me tomorrow, it might become relevant to the job. Every business in the world needs programmers, and even though everyone says business knowledge not required, it helps a great deal. |
| For example, I wouldn't want to work with a programmer who doesn't know the continents, in which continent are most (at least, large) countries located, what is a time zone. Yes, these qualify in my book as "geography". |
| Yes, these are important - for example, what if you get a web hit from china? From North Korea? The importance of time zones - well, that goes without saying. I think time zones are officially part of geography are they not? |
| What about daylight savings time - important or not if you are running a web site? |
Incidentally, DST was never even mentioned in any class I've ever had. ART has only used DST sporadically. It causes too many problems because ART is at UTC-3, which in Buenos Aires it already makes astronomical noon take place at around 12:50. DST pushes it to 13:50. Using DST makes the time in the western provinces off by over two hours relative to astronomical time, so another time zone has to be added for those provinces.
DST in general should be abolished everywhere, really.
| For accounting: adding your revenue and subtracting your expenses IS accounting. Probably not studied in university, but still (a)counts. I won't go into details why that's important to me, or why I wouldn't want to work with people who have no basic sense of it. |
If programming was like accounting, a C++ Hello World would look like this:
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"What I mean is what subject did you find least useful for you as an individual, for example a subject that had the least positive impact in your life."
American History
American History
| why there aren't any classes for appreciation of other forms of expression, such as cinema or painting. |
Some people think algebra is pointless. The newer generations working shops can't work out how much change you should get if the till fails to tell them.
A rounded education exposes you things you wouldn't otherwise likely encounter.
| Actually that seems completely correct, knowledge in those two areas seems quite crucial for doing any serious work. |
| So any development work that doesn't involve either of those subjects (e.g. writing a compiler) is not serious? |
It's my turn to be the devil's advocate and do the hair-splitting:
1. Saying that knowledge is crucial for doing serious work does not mean that this knowledge is directly used.
2. All work involves basic geographic knowledge. As you said, those are things that `everybody should know' - and I agree with you they belong in elementary school geography. But the subject IS geography, so if anyone calls geography useless*, that automatically applies to elementary school geography too.
[Edit]*So far criticism was implied to be of the teaching process, not the subject itself, so this is not aimed at the posts I read.
Related to your example for a compiler writer: I was interviewing recently at a large company for two positions, one of which was compiler engineer (didn't get either position). The interviewing team consisted of 2 Indians, 1 Romanian, 1 Chinese and 1 Turkish team member. There was only one American and that was the HR guy. Now, when you interview, you have to strike a basic conversation for a few minutes at least - say, where are you from, where you studied, etc. Try that without basic geographic knowledge! If you don't know where people's countries are, you will be greatly embarrassed, may even cost you the job.
So back to your example of a compiler writer: if you don't have basic social skills - which do include basic knowledge of geography and about any other subject - you won't get to be a compiler writer. Even if you hack it at home - you will, sooner or later, have to go out in the world and present what you did. Good luck if you are clueless about the real world!
To summarize: basic knowledge of about any subject is essential - for one's social skills at the very least - but not only. So, by that line of thought there are no useless subjects. This is not the devil's advocate speaking here: I actually mean this and that is what I will teach my kids too.
*****
I must admit I helped derail the conversation a bit. Although not precisely phrased that way, the spirit of the original question was which are the most useless subjects to get taught as a graduation requirement for your degree. I haven't made any serious comment on that topic as I was lucky to get taught only specialized (math) courses which are all essential for my mathematics profession (which may soon change to software developer).
As far as studying in high school - the subject I struggled most with - German - turned out to be the one I needed and used most. By a stroke of luck I spent 5 years of my life in that country and although I sucked in high school and was lazy, I'd say I ended up in command of the language - probably better than most of the A and B students in high school.
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| The interviewing team consisted of 2 Indians, 1 Romanian, 1 Chinese and 1 Turkish team member. There was only one American and that was the HR guy. Now, when you interview, you have to strike a basic conversation for a few minutes at least - say, where are you from, where you studied, etc. Try that without basic geographic knowledge! If you don't know where people's countries are, you will be greatly embarrassed, may even cost you the job. |
So they can't be Americans because of the color of their skin? Pretty sure you wouldn't get the job if you asked a person with Chinese ethnicity about China only to find out he was born and raised in America, that'd be even more embarrassing tbh and a bit racist. Your interviewing for a software engineering job, you don't need to know about geography to spark up any other conversation about topics in the field you are dealing with. Even then, asking someone where they are from (instead of assuming they come from somewhere) asking how it's like there cause you've never been there, ask about what the weather is like that time of year there. I don't need to know about the country to be able to spark up conversation about it. There's 100+ countries in the world, add on 50 states to that to know about. If i pick one at random you are telling me you'd know what the capital of that country is and tell me a little bit about the country (without using google)?
Anyways this reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eTqfprSzpU
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Srry Helios, just a memory of the past...
REMEMBER THIS: http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/23336/5/
REMEMBER THIS: http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/23336/5/
"Communications 101"
The course material consisted of speeches that we had to write to persuade someone to a cause... and our topics were always limited to "social issues". The most useless course I ever took. If I cared about convincing anyone to do anything, I'd major in Political "science".
Of Esoteric programming languages, since that was mentioned:
Brainfuck
The course material consisted of speeches that we had to write to persuade someone to a cause... and our topics were always limited to "social issues". The most useless course I ever took. If I cared about convincing anyone to do anything, I'd major in Political "science".
Of Esoteric programming languages, since that was mentioned:
Brainfuck
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