> There was a thread a while back where software developers told me I was unreasonable to expect them to know who the vice president of the country they lived in was.

It is absolutely unreasonable. The average person has no clue who the vice president happens to be ... so why should software developers?

We can complain about how clueless average people are, sure, but there's no reason to apply a higher standard to software developers.

Of course there is. Software developers (in general) are smarter and have had better educations than "average" people.

Most smart, educated people I know can name the vice president of the United States, and I don't even live in the US. I think it's completely unreasonable for someone not to know who the vice president of the country they live in is.

The corner office in the earlier example depends on the software being written to make money. If the software is bad, they will make less money.

By and large, knowing the vice president's name will not cause any appreciable dip or rise in how much money a company makes.

So, in the context of 'why is it important for business people who's livelihoods partially depend on code to know what code is?' not knowing what programmers do is worse than not knowing the vice president's name

Wait, what? The average person doesn't know who the vice president of their own country is? I'm Canadian and I still know who the US vice president is. Surely most American adults do too.

Nope: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368482/How-ignorant...

Lots of people hate politics and really avoid any study of it.

> Stumped: In the U.S. citizenship test, only 38 per cent of Americans passed

> Although the majority passed, more than a third - 38 per cent - failed,

Daily Mail is fucking useless.

LOL, that's funny. I'll admit I saw a few articles on this survey and the Daily Mail's was first on my results list. Does cringing while posting it lend forgiveness? ;)

From your link: "...who is the Vice President of America? (29 per cent did not know)"

So the majority of Americans do indeed know who the vice president is. (Although yes, a large minority don't.)

The data is from the US Citizenship test, so those taking it aren't "Americans" yet and have been specifically studying for the test.

I stand by my assertion that the majority of Americans have no clue who Biden is and I swear to you, I wish I didn't either. The whole political arena is absolutely revolting and I'm not surprised the majority of people are apathetic to it.

Actually it says they gave the citizenship test to 1000 Americans to see how they would do. 29% didn't know who the VP was (so 71% did). 1000 isn't a massive sample, but I expect it's enough to say that the majority of American adults do know. Anyway, it isn't a very interesting discussion regardless.

I'm Aussie, I know the vice president of the US off the top of my head, but I couldn't tell you the Australian vice prime minister. Or even if that's a real thing.

What's the Vice President relevant to? It seems to me that for most of us it would be more relevant to know the name of e.g. the head of the FTC - and I don't think that's something you'd expect of people. Even if you did want to know about the Vice President, knowing his party or policies is surely more important than his name. A name is just a trivial fact, not important to actual understanding - and you could look it up if you ever needed it. I'm reminded of http://unreasonable.org/Feynman_and_the_map_of_the_cat .