alt Hacker NewsI am sure the author is a fine person, but this is an incredibly self-entitled piece. A number of biologists managed to make it through these classes just fine, and are paid much less for pursuing their passion (and making the breakthroughs the author enjoys reading about while on vacation).
A title like "I wish I had enough attention to get through the boring parts of high school biology, I now find pop biology interesting" may have had less impact, though.
Computer scientists and programmers are very intelligent people who often have grossly unrealistic projections of their competency in other fields, and this is a fine example of the phenomenon.
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The author did fine in another field, but might have picked biology instead if they had gotten the switch flipped earlier in life. That some people get through bad classes isn't a proof that those classes are good; you get those few who would survive no matter what, and those whose brain-wiring is conducive to the way the bad classes are structured. This has a tendency to reduce diversity of thought over time, and contributes to academic ossification.
Secondly, fields really do need cross-discipline collaboration. Finding passionate CS people is fantastic because they bring a different skill set. I have often found that when we get diverse experts together, we can have everyone do the "easy part" and get results which would be otherwise unobtainable.
Yes, some people have 'engineers disease' and fail to appreciate the depth of knowledge and skills of folks who have spent their life in another domain... But the author doesn't seem to be one of these. Many of their favorite stories appreciate the combination of insight and hard work in the history of the field.
It does, indeed, suck that people working in biology get paid less than computer engineers. Blame capitalism...
What does the author claim entitlement to? Or what real-world malign effect are you expecting from this piece that warrants the charge? I went in expecting the type of piece you describe, since I know the type, but I've failed to read it as you do except with a disqualifying squint.
The post is not about becoming a professional academic/researcher in biology, so it's not clear why your comments (this and the earlier deleted one) focus on competency, calling the author "not cut out for biology", etc.
The post is simply about what you call enough attention to get through the boring parts of high school biology — should biology in school be only for those who have that ability? Even if being a professional biologist requires those attributes, shouldn't the teaching of the science of life—which is full of wonder—have a bit of something for everyone else too? Even people who don't become biologists ought to love biology, surely?
That's what the post (like the earlier one by Somers) is about; it's not about “I could have become a biologist” (as you seem to be implying). You can call it pop biology, but it's missing from school where “astonishing facts were presented without astonishment”. I see nothing self-entitled about this.
It's the same in mathematics, say: even if being a professional mathematician requires (say) thinking long and hard and being willing to struggle with difficult problems, manipulating things in one's head, etc — surely there is value in exposing more students to pop mathematics / beautiful results (enjoying which is very different from actually doing mathematics, sure), so that more people could love mathematics recreationally, whether or not they become professional ones?
The other top-level thread that talks about how this happens in CS education too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43764315) seems to get the point of the post: it's the equivalent of Lockhart's A Mathematician’s Lament (https://worrydream.com/refs/Lockhart_2002_-_A_Mathematician'... ).