Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!pbhyf!rsp
From: rsp@PacBell.COM (Steve Price)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Rhetoric and Software Engineering
Message-ID: <5315@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 17 May 89 21:36:08 GMT
References: <1886@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
Reply-To: rsp@PacBell.COM (Steve Price)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 34

In article <1886@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> jacksonr@handel.ColoState.EDU (robert marsh  jackson) writes:
>
> 
> 
> 
>      Is there a relationship between Eloquent Rhetoric and 
>                        Computer Science?
> 
As a former professor of English and a veteran of years of teaching rhetoric
and public speaking, I'd say you answered your own question rather well and
convincingly.  Yes!

I have always seen these connections between well-designed programs/systems
and well-designed essays/speeches, and always wondered why others never
seemed to be aware of it.  I'm glad to see I am not alone.

Now that I'm a programmer, striving to become a software engineer :-), I'd
make a better English professor, especially when facing the CS major who
can't see any earthly reason for taking Freshman Composition (where I taught
mostly Rhetoric) seriously.

I admit that it did take me a while when changing careers from teaching to 
data processing, to get over the bias that implies that only math or physic
or engineering students can be "real programmers".  I almost believed that
myself, but my background in rhetoric has given me a very strong platform
from which to design programs, systems and especially databases.  I find
that a natural grasp of relational database theory flows from my Humanities
training.  So I second your motion to include Computer Science in the 
Humanities disciplines as much as in the "hard" sciences.
-- 
Steve Price
pacbell!pbhyf!rsp
(415)823-1951
"'Nothing will come from nothing' without information" -- Shakespeare & Bateson