Kevin Carey has a nice article in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, on ‘Decoding the Value of Computer Science.’ He does a good job of describing some of the broad benefits a CS education provides, including things like clarity of thought and expression, an attention to detail, and an ability to study complex systems. If you are a young person considering studying CS, please don’t listen to those messages that your peers or the media may give you — you know what I mean: ‘being a slacker is cool’, ‘don’t get a job where you have to think hard’, ‘style is more important than substance.’ In fact, thinking hard and figuring out how stuff works and creating things that improve people’s lives is great fun! And you can get paid to do it!