My experience so far!
Beginning with my experience with coding so far, I will begin by saying I am a prospective Computer Science major with a fair amount of courses under my belt so far. Like most people in my position, I have found programming as both a immensely rewarding and frustrating experience. Nothing can humble someone more than being forced to debug their code for hours only to find a few missing characters … I initially began taking CS classes because as someone who loves puzzles, the technical problem solving aspect appealed to me. However, I chose to go to a Liberal Arts School for a variety of reasons, not simply to become yet another coder monkey. As such, the humanities is another point of interest that I hope to explore, and I believe there are benefits to being a student of the humanities with a working knowledge of computer science.
Why would this be an asset to humanities students?
Beginning more broadly, the general thinking processes of learning to program will always be valuable to anyone in any discipline. While it is not to say that you are unable to develop a similar set of skills, the methodical and patient thinking involved with Computer Science is an invaluable skill for everyone (although the reverse is definitely true where skills developed through the humanities can benefit Computer Scientists). More specifically, as the world becomes more digitized—for better or worse—having the knowledge and ability to navigate that world could be more and more of an asset to humanities students.
“I believe that, increasingly, an appreciation of how complex ideas can be imagined and expressed as a set of formal procedures — rules, models, algorithms — in the virtual space of a computer will be an essential element of a humanities education.”
From Hello Worlds (why humanities students should learn to program) by Matthew Kirschenbaum
In the context of our class, we are gaining an appreciation for representing the humanities through a digital medium. Shortly, we will set up our own websites to display our class projects, which introduces another useful tool for students of the humanities, web-design…
<!HTML sample page>
<html>
<head>
<title>A web page to display all my projects</title>
<!A linked CSS file to style our page>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>Although I cannot say with as much confidence as someone with more humanities experience, the digital world has a distinct place in modern humanities.
-Liam Keane / Jan 18
