I have met a few experienced #IT practitioners who are also well read in the classics. Some even know Greek or Latin. But even these erudite, senior folk balk at my advice to show due regard for the "classics" in #computing by reading early seminal papers (Gödel, Church, Turing, Kleene, von Neumann, Shannon, etc.) and by studying early pillar #programming languages (an assembly, Forth, ALGOL, SIMULA, LISP, ISWIM, etc.).
Most IT thought leaders today dismiss those computing classics as being too old for, too distant from, too irrelevant to modern IT practice. By "modern", they mean #AI/#ML, of course.
If one opts to allot a significant portion of his scarce free time to reading Plato or Virgil, one ought to allocate at least an equal amount of effort to studying the classics in one's own field of practice.
Perhaps these modern thought leaders are right; I may have become stale and crusty, mired in my tired old ways. But I still fervently believe that a conscientious practitioner should be a lifelong learner who never deems superfluous the knowledge of his own field's foundation and history.
Classics—their utility is not pecuniary, but perspective.
