This article also struck a chord with me. About 3 years ago I started working half-time as a software developer at a civil engineering company. Originally they wanted to hire me because they had some 3D visualizations in their software with which they had problems and I, coming from a game development background, could help them out. By now, I'm deeply immersed in geotechnical topics on a daily basis and I think it's fair to say that I've became a valuable asset for them.
However, I've been having doubts about how long I should still stay there, because of this 'digital nomad' lifestyle which seems to be so popular now (and which appeals to me also). So, that article was a little relief for me, seeing that there are indeed still people who value a willingness to immerse oneself deep into a topic and come up with novel and simple solutions to problems your users face in that field (something which I've liked about software engineering from the start).
Also, to add to your point about the CS courses: I think the math-heavy courses, although they really may be overdoing it in a lot of CS courses, can at least help sharpen your analytical thinking skills. This can help tremendously when you're thrown into something new where the most important thing you need to do is figure out what the problem actually is and what people need from you to solve it.
Lovely to hear you have a position at the intersection of software and civils like this. I am a software dev that switched careers shortly after graduating with a civil & structural degree, always thought I'd be of most value combining the two at some point. There is hope!
Another Civil & structural guy here. The ability to code does magic at times. Many design steps can be automated. It need not be something huge. Once I automated transfer of data from one software to anther using EXCEL VBA which used to take 2+ Man-days in manual style. Within a month almost entire department was using this excel sheet to do this particular task. Fun times.
However, I've been having doubts about how long I should still stay there, because of this 'digital nomad' lifestyle which seems to be so popular now (and which appeals to me also). So, that article was a little relief for me, seeing that there are indeed still people who value a willingness to immerse oneself deep into a topic and come up with novel and simple solutions to problems your users face in that field (something which I've liked about software engineering from the start).
Also, to add to your point about the CS courses: I think the math-heavy courses, although they really may be overdoing it in a lot of CS courses, can at least help sharpen your analytical thinking skills. This can help tremendously when you're thrown into something new where the most important thing you need to do is figure out what the problem actually is and what people need from you to solve it.