More significantly, many of us in the humanities miss the extent to which programming is a creative and generative activity.
Matt Kirschenbaum, Hello Worlds: Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program
Whether or not humanities students should learn to code is a heatedly debated question within the Digital Humanities community. As both a coder and digital humanities student myself, I think humanities student may not learn to code but should at least know coding as a tool or window through which they can view the topics they are keen on from a different perspective.
Based on former coding experiences of C++, Python, Java, etc., I have grasped the “grammar” and styles of these two languages quite smoothly. No matter which language programs and algorithms created by codes are in, they are all designed to serve as tools for humans to solve problems which will otherwise take much more human resources and efforts. Codes are the bridge between coming up a solution and getting the correct answer.
Below are two segments of code, the first in HTML and the second in CSS. By putting these two files together in one folder, the characters in “p” paragraphs will be modified by the CSS codes to be red and those in “a” weblinks be blue on the webpage created by the HTML codes. By presenting these two segments of codes, I intend to reveal the purpose and essence of coding in my comprehension: link. Codes of different languages(e.g. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) link together to link information of different sources or even fields(e.g. topics of humanities) together.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>CSS Example</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
...p {
color: red;
}
a {
color: blue;
}Continuing on that simile comparing codes to a bridge, the answer to the question acts as another bridge between humanists and common people, the subject of humanities. Therefore, in conclusion, humanities students should know coding as such a bridge in order not to “miss the extent”.
1 thought on “[Blog 3] Reflection on relationship of Humanities and code”
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I definitely agree with this stance! Some people on the opposing side may take the maximalist stance that humanities students shouldn’t delve into coding at all, and I feel that they may be missing out on a key opportunity. I believe that coding can truly help advance the work being done in the humanities, but I know that an advanced level of coding skill isn’t required to conduct phenomenal work. However, I feel that introductory exploration of coding should be required, just for exposure purposes.