[somenameforme]

Not just Europe. Well into relatively modern history educated individuals in America were expected to have fluency in Latin and frequently Greek as well. This [1] Harvard admission exam from 1869 immediately comes to mind. Applicants were expected to be able to pass that test, and the overwhelming majority did.

[1] - https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/education/harvard...

[mostertoaster]

The classical school movement in America is growing quite rapidly, and so maybe we start to see it again?

My kids at least are all learning Latin, and later, Greek.

[oersted]

In Spain both are still taught in the standard high-school curriculum.

Not everyone takes those classes of course, but Latin is one of the core optatives in the humanities path, it can be chosen in the university entrance exam as one of the core tests, and many students do pick it.

It's not really taught as a foreign language though, it is used to teach fundamental concepts in linguistic analysis and translation, and it can be a legitimately valuable foundation to have a strong general literacy across romance languages.

I'm not sure how common it is elsewhere, but Roman law also makes up a non-trivial fraction of the compulsory curriculum in the first years of studying law at university. Most of the concepts are still relevant, it's what all modern legal systems are founded on.

I remember that a good friend of mine somehow avoided studying maths for the last four years of high-school by choosing all the alternatives, which included both Latin and ancient Greek. He was and still is a fantastic programmer despite hating maths though, obsessed with Linux distros from early teens.

[anthk]

Give him this book, it's pre-University, from the Algebra basics to Calculus. https://biblioteca.empresainteligente.com/resources/bibliote...

It's in Spanish, proof based, but not as hard as Spivak. If he is good at programming he must be good at logic and thus if he understands Math as something to apply rules, he we will ace the book.

He can use Maxima to locally solve the equations. Forget LLM's, these will just make him dumber. Maxima to test the solutions, pen and paper:

https://maxima.sourceforge.io/

Docs in Spanish https://maxima.sourceforge.io/docs/manual/es/maxima.html

More books, "Primeros Pasos" it's a good one to start with and then just use the Maxima manual as the reference:

https://maxima.sourceforge.io/es/documentation.html

The Windows version comes with everything in the installer. Linux distros have it in its repos, install "wxmaxima" and "maxima-doc" for documentation. It's weights very little, less than 100MB. Install Gnuplot too for plots/charts/graphs (altough it might come preinstalled for Windows).

And a Math background, even a basic one will be extremeley helpful while coding.

Most schools in Spain thaught us Math as methods to blindly apply formulae based on rote memorization and everyone was just clueless.

[graemep]

> Most schools in Spain thaught us Math as methods to blindly apply formulae based on rote memorization and everyone was just clueless.

Common in many countries. Its a problem in the UK and getting worse.

[wahern]

What's called "Roman law" in Europe derives from the Justinian Code, which was nominally a codification of but in many respects a radical reinterpretation of late roman law. Prior to the Justinian Code, and especially Scholastic era glosses, Roman law was arguably more like a very rigid style of common law; that is, requiring judges to hew closely to precedent rather than applying abstract legal principles.

It was the rediscovery of the Justinian Code during the Scholastic age which kickstarted a blossoming of legal theory in Europe. But they didn't understand that the Justinian Code wasn't a reflection of Roman law so much as a reflection of Emperor Justinian's reforms, which were in part an attempt to reassert control over and simplify the legal system.

[watwut]

Probably not. They were not learning it for funsies, but because it was the business language. English took its place now. If English goes away, it will be replaced by a language by another dominant business power.

[mostertoaster]

Yeah I agree.

Still would be very valuable to be able to read works that shaped western civilization in their original language, since a lot of nuance is lost translating to English. Just see how many crazy readings of the Bible people have (american evangelicals particularly ) because English can’t express the original idea in Greek well enough.

[iso1631]

Classical greek and modern greek are quite different

[ai_slop_hater]

Audentes fortuna iuvat!

[graemep]

I was thinking of rather earlier in history, but you are right.

My grandfather was studied Latin (and Greek) in school in Sri Lanka.