Re: Fair wage

[Mitch Berg <mberg -at- IS -dot- COM>]

This list is taking one of its periodic swerves into an area where
simple common sense would have prevented us being in the first place:

Wing, Michael J wrote:
>
> All right!  One of my favorite debates is raising its head again.
>
> <snip>
> >
> >Why?  Because I believe ...that it's much easier to teach a..writer programming or
> >engineering than..to teach an equally bright programmer or engineer
> >who's a poor writer how to write well.
>
> I couldn't disagree more.  The "writing is harder than engineering"
> response is usually made by someone who has never been an Engineer...
> I think that is much, much harder to teach a Writer to subclass objects
> or perform step analysis on a circuit than it is to teach an Engineer
> not to end a sentence with a preposition.

The answer to this, as to most things in life is "It Depends".

My degree is English, with minors in Computer Science, German and
History.  My background is primarily in humanities...

...and I find Object Oriented Design ("subclassing objects") quite
intuitive.  It shares a lot of basic concepts with Linguistics.  Now,
when you get into circuit design and testing, that's another matter -
and it's of no concern to me, 'cuz I don't work in EEE.

Which is easier to train in the other discipline?  It depends.  Michael
makes the excellent point that engineers at least start out speaking and
writing the language a little, while there's no general cultural
requirement to understand material stress coefficients.  That being
said, beyond a certain point it IS hard to teach lots of engineers how
to write well - esp. well-planned, organized, well-developed writing.

So - Why argue about it?  What IS the point?

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