While I don’t think it should be required for all students to learn to code, I do see how having the ability to code is a useful and important skill.
An important point that Donahue makes in his essay is that coding is not the only way in which one can engage with the computer sciences, and rather it’s just one way in which the information is conveyed in the computer sciences.
While programming will indeed usefully equip one better to understand computer scientific discourses, it should NOT be taken as the necessary precondition to engaging with the computer sciences … the discourse of programming is only the technical jargon with which computer scientists address many of the very same questions that one encounters every day in the humanities.
Donahue, Evan. “A ‘Hello World’ Apart (Why Humanities Students Should NOT Learn to Program).” Hastac, 28 May 2010, https://web.archive.org/web/20220516075231/https://www.hastac.org/blogs/evan-donahue/2010/05/28/hello-world-apart-why-humanities-students-should-not-learn-program.
This enhanced ability to engage with the computer sciences is a good reason for requiring humanities students to learn to code, but as Donahue points out, it can be achieved through different forms of engagement with the computer sciences other than coding. Understanding how a broad rage of digital things work to a basic level is a satisfactory way to start to enmesh the digital realm and the humanities for humanities students. It makes the most sense for people to explore disciplines and specialize as they please, and then collaborate to bring the best of everyone’s work into one project. For example, the DH projects we analyzed were not created by one person, they were created using teams of specialists who had specific skills.
Before today I had no prior experience coding. It has been something I’ve been interested in learning, but until now I hadn’t had the chance to learn it in school, and I wasn’t motivated enough to learn it on my own. I still don’t consider myself proficient whatsoever, but I do know how to make a silly little thing like this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<b>Reasons why I don't need to be fluent in code as a humanities student</b>
</head>
<body>
<ol>
<li> Collaboration allows for me to specialize in the humanities and someone else to specialize in code </li>
<li>There is inherent value in my work without it being digitized</li>
<li>There are other ways to engage with the computer sciences other than through code</li>
<li><span style="color:green">I don't want to! (jk)</span></li>
</body>
</html>5 thoughts on “First experience coding with HTML & CSS”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Though I’m all for humanities students and scholars learning to code, I really like your point of not making code mandatory since there are those who specialize in coding. In the humanities field, it seems that collaboration is an essential piece of project creation. So I do wonder if perhaps letting humanities-specialists collaborate with coding-specialists would perhaps be the most efficient way of getting projects done.
I disagree with you on the basis point about whether or not humanities students should learn to code, I found it interesting that we had similar arguments at the core. I hadn’t before thought about how there are other important areas of computer science to understand apart from coding. I think that I still stand by my argument about understanding coding because it is the primary language of computer science. Going forward, I will consider more about the other areas of computer science and their role.
I have a kind of similar reaction as you to this quote: nowadays, people only need to know how to operate something instead of knowing every details that allow such operations, which is why only instruction books are provided with the products instead of a whole bunch of textbooks from fields that the products cover. This can act as a reason why humanities students do not need to learn coding. However, knowing the essence always helps one to better explore the surface. Being a scholar, they should have such experiences to dig deeper into this field.
I think your argument is strong, however based on my personal experience, I’d like to respectfully question your point that coding is not required to engage with computer sciences. While I agree that other fields may collaborate with computer sciences and utilize the field’s benefits, to actually engage in the computer science field itself, coding knowledge seems to be the base standard these days. I learned how to code basic JavaScript back in Intro to Computer Science in high school, and in every advanced class I have taken, the course material is structured in a way in which it expects the learner to know the foundations of coding and programming languages. Even my Math of CS and Algorithms classes had some basic expectation for us to know some coding to complete assignments, even though those classes are mainly theoretical, and proof based.
I definitley agree with you on this point. I originally thought that “learn to code” meant “get a bona-fide CS degree” but a less extreme education in computer science is beneficial for the humanities, or most fields nowadays.