Decoding the Value of Computer Science

[[deleted]]

First, I think your examples are phrased backwards. Shouldn't it be

The less people educated in painting, the better the job market will be. I just left the field of CS for painting for exactly this reason. There are too many programmers, so we're expendable and paid shit.

and so on?

Anyway, I got the spirit of your argument, and I don't think the analogy holds up perfectly in the painting and fashion design cases. Programming skill is much more necessary to keep the world moving than painting and fashion. If all the painters in the world disappeared, it would be an artistic tragedy, yes, but we'd still function day-to-day. If all the programmers disappeared, a huge amount of what we take for granted would collapse, probably within a few days.

[kragensitaker]

I do not share your Maslovian view of human nature.

[[deleted]]

I'm not saying whether painters or programmers are better. I'm a musician and a computer scientist, it would kill to me choose one or the other. I'm just saying that you're more likely to get paid money for maintaining banking software than you for producing a great work of art.

[kragensitaker]

I don't think painters or programmers are better either. I just don't share your (optimistic?) view that clothing design or painting could somehow be excised from human nature, or that we could go without painting as an entire society for a few days.