The Benefits of a Classical Education

"Lector, si monumentum requiris, Circumspice."

One I've always loved, inscribed above the crypt containing the grave of Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral. Translated as: "Reader, if you seek his memorial, look around you"

Think that would work equally well for Tim O'Reilly, to the point of a nice Latin pun ;)

I have a hazy recollection that classical education used to mean mathematics, Greek and latin. I take that combination to be pretty good prep for hacking haskell, clojure, erlang, F#, whatever.

Especially with some logic, stats/probability, applied math, linguistics, and intro classes to assembler and C thrown in.

I guess this explains how he got into publishing books for programmers/developers. . .

O'Reilly was initially interested. . .but after graduating. . .with a B.A. cum laude in Classics he became involved in the field of computer manuals.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Reilly]

"I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally."

For an individual who has studied classics, you would expect that he would know that all the ancients, greek and romans, considered virtue as a habit, not Aristotle alone. It was rather a cultural thing which is why the Romans emphasised training their pupils to be good citizens by teachers of great character so that they can imitate their habits.