e-Jan Networks Presentse-Jan!WorkStyleBlog e-Jan Search About
Category Working Telework Living Leisure etc

Are liberal arts useless in the IT industry?

I hope no one is offended by the click-baiting title, but isn’t it what people usually ask from the bottom of their heart? Many programmers are from Taiwan at e-Jan, and one of them told me that one must have a science degree in order to become a developer in Taiwan. During the job interview for a position of developer, the interviewer expressed concern because I studied economics (which is a liberal art) in university. I think that is perfectly normal and valid concern because technical knowledge is essential indeed. You may say that the developer is not the only position in IT industry. There are sales, administrative, promotion, and other departments, and people who have liberal arts background can work there. From this reason, you may conclude that liberal arts are essential in those “suitable” positions and good knowledge to have as an option for technical jobs. Sounds good and peaceful? I would say that conclusion is rather boring. In this post, I will explain why liberal arts are necessary knowledge in IT industry including technical positions.

First of all, liberal arts make you unique. I think we all agree that creativity is extremely valuable in the IT industry. In order to be creative, we need to be human, not computers. Liberal arts is basically the study about human activities, and it guides us to become artists and designers. For example, writing a maintainable code is very important in software development. Maintainable code means it is easy to understand by other people. Let’s say I made a text editor, and the document can be saved as txt file. Next year, the company realized that users want to save their documents as pdf files. However, if I am no longer in the company, someone else would need to modify the codes I wrote last year. If my codes are impossible to understand, then the new person will have to write codes all over again from scratch. It would be very costly for company just to modify the existing software. Also, the “other people” can be myself. What if I have to modify my software I made three years ago? I would probably have to review every code because I do not remember how I wrote. From this reasoning, maintainability is also very important for myself. However, it is not a science, but an art. Judging whether a code is maintainable or not is subjective and opinionated. Writing a “good” code is a social activity to convince someone to agree that your code is easy to understand for him or her. How can you write a code for human being without understanding human beings? You sure can write a working code as everybody can, but it may not be a uniquely “better” one. Maintainability is just an example, and I am pretty sure there are more situations for you to be creative and unique.

Economically, the importance of liberal arts has increased over time. In the past, computers were very slow and expensive. Making a fast software was number one priority. Simply, making a fast and working software was enough for customers. Nowadays however, computers are fast and inexpensive. Thanks to that, everyone has their own PC and smartphone. Although performance may be still an issue for some mobile devices, beautiful design and easy-to-use interface definitely became more important. A user-friendly software requires human related knowledge (liberal arts), while high performance software requires technical knowledge. In other words, it is clear that the main concern was switched from computer to human.

In conclusion, I believe liberal arts are mandatory knowledge in IT industry. Actually, studying technical subjects can be equally enjoyable as studying liberal arts. The technical knowledge is for creations to improve human society. Whether we like it or not, we will eventually have to deal with humans. Even though it seems that technical knowledge and liberal arts go separately, I believe these are supposed to go together like a married couple.

-R.O. (moved to Japan in 2017, started working in 2017)