Writing is good for your career as a software engineer.

Writing is how you promote yourself through articles, presentations, etc.

Not at all. Writing entails some creative freedom. It was more like "read this essay and make sure your opinion does not depart too far from the professor's"

I don't bother reading articles by people who can't form a complete sentence. In my experience, there's a strong correlation between bad writing and having nothing perceptive to say.

There are exceptions, but in general, an ability to communicate clearly correlates to an ability to think clearly.

I expected saying that would be unpopular. But I'm hardly alone in this attitude, and so it pays to learn how to write.

Composition can be incredible. It's a blank canvas type course that can be about anything the professor wants as long as they're teaching you to write. My composition class was a passionate introduction to western philosophy. Incredible class. Pedagogical laziness, overly prescriptive syllabi, or lack of creativity make classes like composition bad— not the subject itself.