[techtalk] This talk of N-ary trees and other things...

[Makiko Itoh]

>YES!!!  We talk about that a lot where I work.  My company is crawling
>with people who have advanced math degrees.  I affectionatly call 'em
>"Those Math People."  They took to computer languages so easily.  I, on
>the other hand, am degreed in Comparative Literature (yes, I know how to
>say, "Would you like fries with that?").  We've had many good discussions
>about my background in grammar and language studies as my backbone vs.
>their math backgrounds when approaching learning new development skills.

Mine too! My degree is in art history and French literature 
(fortunately I didn't have to learn how to say "would you like fries 
with that" since  my accountant-stepfather taught me some bookkeeping 
basics to earn money off of) but I've found that the discipline 
involved in learning another human language is very helpful for 
programming. My first language is Japanese and I learned English 
early, and have since tackled French and German, and I can almost 
feel the same part of my brain working when I'm trying to learn Java 
for instance.

Being a liberal arts major also helps to foster skills which are so 
useful in other ways for real life, like how to do research or how to 
write a decent looking sentence. I think when you work in a web 
related field all of those skills some to good use!

>I really think that "Those Math People" are way ahead of me in many
>respects, but my education has found many uses in this field.
>
-- 
Makiko Itoh (Maki)
PRODOK Engineering, Switzerland: http://www.prodok.com
[building bridges for information]