
Ask HN: What was the most useful elective you took in school? - arduinomancer
Trying to decide what upper year electives to take.<p>Which ones have you found to be the most practical?
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hideo
Unix System Programming. A course largely based around
[https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Programming-UNIX-
Environment...](https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Programming-UNIX-
Environment-3rd/dp/0321637739)

An interesting side-effect of this course - I got _really_ good at using a
console/command prompt and handling text with vim and pipes and filters and
other text manipulation. I think this has helped me me productive at my jobs
way more than I thought it would :)

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greenyoda
Various economics courses, such as macro/microeconomics and corporate finance.
These gave me a foundation for understanding investing, once I had some money
to invest. (I was a CS major.)

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aik
The most useful one by a long degree for me was one where the professor was
exceptional and one I related heavily with and learned from personally. At
least at my uni there were very few of those. It was a capstone course in some
humanities subject. I have come to believe that students often significantly
underestimate the effect a professor can have, and it’s very worthwhile to
research and even meet potential future professors/mentors prior to signing on
to a course where $100s-$1000s will be spent (it’s actually kind of insane
that most people don’t spend more time on this given the cost.)

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starky
Probably the two most useful courses I took period were electives as part of
my business minor.

Financial Accounting has been incredibly useful to understand how businesses
operate and why they make many of the decisions they do. Not to mention
understanding a bit about finances helps with investing.

Marketing was also a very important course, though not as a direct application
as it is taught. Finding a job, and indeed many things at work require you to
market yourself and/or your ideas. Understanding the principles of marketing
makes being successful at your career much easier.

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gauMah
As a computer science grad, I am glad that I took few subjects from humanities
stream like science technology and society, introduction to Plato etc. It
equipped me to read much larger literature, taught me to raise right kind of
questions and challenged me go out of my context and rethink my own opinion

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nerdwaller
A really practical one is some type of finance course. It’s amazing how few
people understand basic finance, accounting, debt management, etc. An
alternative could be a business or entrepreneurship course, if you’re
interested in going your own way.

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oldmancoyote
I was studying geology and took a course on programming for geologists.
Getting a job as a geologist is very hard, instead I built an entire career on
that one course.

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arduinomancer
That’s amazing

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oldmancoyote
That was 50 years ago, and the barriers to enter the programming profession
were much lower. I'm sure that I couldn't do it today.

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bemmu
Japanese. Led me to study in Japan, get married and start a small business
here.

~~~
audiometry
What is your small business? How is it to setup and operate business in Japan?

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csa
Candyjapan

He has a blog about it.

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PascLeRasc
Quantitative Systems Neuroscience. I was pursuing an EE degree and while I
like signals and embedded, this class introduced me to the idea of
neurological circuits and machine learning, and I've since been pursuing a
career in academic research around that.

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Benjmhart
Symbolic logic 1, 2, and 3.

Years later I launched a career in programming and these classes gave me an
enormous edge

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Kaibeezy
Journalism.

Specifically, basic journalistic writing practice. Taking a pile of info and
turning it into a _very_ concise and efficient written report. Valuable beyond
measure.

Psst, here’s the secret (same as with breeding guppies): cull, cull, cull.

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ljsocal
Accounting, typing, psych class (human growth and Dev), graphic design and
photography.

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csa
Figure drawing.

It taught me how to see. The professor was absolutely amazing, and the stuff
he taught us was as much about life as it was about drawing.

This led to later courses in painting and photography that expanded on this. I
almost became a professional photographer, but I realized that the art was
addictive for me in an unhealthy way. I would get lost in my art and forget to
eat, sleep, etc. While exhilarating, that was not the life I wanted to lead.

Note that the quality of the professor matters much more than the specific
medium for most art courses, imho.

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buffaloo
Typing in high school. Hands down most useful single elective I took.

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0x445442
Yeah I took typing in high school on those old mechanical type writers. I took
the class because the football coach was the instructor. I had no idea how
beneficial touch typing would turn out to be in my career.

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hazz99
Entrepreneurship, as a CS major. Only exposure to business, and has helped me
a lot. Having some sort of process is invaluable to someone new to the
(startup) industry.

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ArtWomb
Probability and Statistics. Forms the basis of modern AI ;)

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ovatsug25
Art History. Gives you new eyes. Also...if you’re a boy—great place to meet
girls. PG reccomend this and I followed and second his advice.

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tonic-music
Spanish

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dharmab
Technical Writing

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tuesday20
Can you explain a bit more?

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dharmab
In grade school English classes there was always an emphasis on creative
writing with rich imagery and a strong aesthetic sense. That is wonderful for
entertainment and humourus conversation, but when taken too far makes your
writing voice sound flowery, condescending or simply difficult to understand.

Technical writing teaches you to have a second voice which is simple, direct
and unambiguous. It's a huge asset for business communication, documentation
and SOPs.

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9wzYQbTYsAIc
Interpersonal communication

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smt88
Political philosophy, intro to finance, and business law

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cm2012
Speech. I learned I'm really good at speeches.

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CharlesDodgson
Spatial Information Systems

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ShankRedemption
Distributed systems

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JasonKidwell
Computers

