Is this meant to be art? Why should an architect know Shakespeare and QWERTY?
Should a welder know about quarks and neutrinos?
Should a welder know about quarks and neutrinos?
The list obviously plays with leaving things vague, ambiguous, uncertain. It's funny how this seems to enrage certain people.
An architect should know QWERTY because it is a form and pattern that people are familiar with. One part of architecture is informing people how to use spaces without instructions and to do so, an architect must understand the patterns they are already familiar with
Well why not? QWERTY could refer to just being able to type. An artist could possibly do well to be able to use a computer? It could also refer to the placement on old style typewriters where the type bars could get jammed if letters used often in the English language were typed in quick succession. (Myth maybe? But interesting to think about anyway for someone that is going to design things for other people to use.)
As to Shakespeare, it has been suggested that people that read fiction/literature of this sort develop empathy and makes you a "better" person.
It's highly debatable, and arguably a myth. The QWERTY design predated any potential jamming problems. Perhaps it was so foreseeing? It's really hard to believe general ergonomy was the top priority, as all the characters of the word TYPEWRITER are placed in the top row, which could have hardly happened by sheer coincidence, but was very convenient for the sake of sale presentations in the early years...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...
Apparently it was partly publicity stunt, partly defined through feedback received from actual users.
Argh, no. E and R are separated by D, 4, and C. It would be nice if someone writing about typewriters actually looked at one.
The bar-adjacent letter pairs, from most to least frequent¹, are MI BY CR NU HN XE HM AZ DC GB ZW VT FV SX.
As computer programmers, this is perhaps even more important (since we're rarely writing programs for the sake of writing programs), but it's valuable to every industry to have a well rounded and well educated individual.
More specifically, a welder who learns about quarks and neutrinos shows curiosity beyond "an electrical arc creates heat and melts metal", a trait present in individuals who strive to better themselves and their craft.
Architecture is about design so it's fair to think that an architect should know about art and (some kind of) product design.
The analogy that I can think would be something like - A developer should know about network and how the user will use software, this concepts are important even if the programmer do not work directly with this things.
It was also posted 16 hours ago and sunk without trace, presumably because nobody wanted to say 'this is stupid' incase it was genius and they appeared thick.
It is pretty stupid.
It may not be _genius_, but I don't think it's stupid, and especially not because it's an artistic rather than practical guide.
You could present this as a list of things ${profession} should know, and somebody somewhere would find it a refreshing thought experiment.
I would question if those mental gymnastics reflect on the source, or on the individual who created the meaning?
Without context its just a list of stuff with indeterminate intent - any artistry is the result of the reader willing it into existence.