Computers should not be black boxes but rather understood as engines for creating powerful and persuasive models of the world around us. The world around us (and inside us) is something we in the humanities have been interested in for a very long time. 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.
https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/hello-worlds/
In discussions of Digital Humanities as an interdisciplinary field, one controversial topic has been whether DH students should learn to code. I agree with Matthew Kirschenbaum’s opinion that programming is a valuable skill for humanities students since it offers a powerful tool to create models of the world around us. I believe that humanities students should learn to code for serval reasons. Firstly, learning how to code enables humanities students to deliver their messages to a greater range of people. As the world around us becomes increasingly digitalized, many fields of study have undertaken tremendous changes, especially for humanities. As a subject that investigates the aspects of human society and culture, it is highly affected by rapid technological development and digitalization. As social media and online platforms become predominant in all sorts of communications nowadays, many humanities projects seek to present their analysis in creative and interactive ways. We have seen many DH projects in this class, and I think they are more accessible to the general public than traditional presentations of humanities projects, such as essays and journals. The interactive feature of DH projects attracts audiences to fully explore the ideas, and the visual presentation allows people to understand the concepts easily. Moreover, as an interdisciplinary field of studies, humanities rely heavily on data analysis. Programming can be said to be the most efficient tool for storing and analyzing data. Thus, having some coding skills indeed reduces the workload and provides humanities students with a new perspective to solve problems.
I had some programming experience in high school, and I have taken two computer science classes here at Carleton. I‘ve learned three programming languages so far and gained very useful problem-solving skills that I can apply to other subjects, such as mathematics, statistics, and humanities to tackle questions more efficiently.
Below is my first HTML program that lists a few reasons why students should learn to code.
4 thoughts on “Blog Week 3: Should DH students learn to code?”
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I think this is a really well-worded argument about why humanities students should learn to code. The argument I presented in my post was more in line with Donahue’s essay about why they shouldn’t, but I don’t think I fall squarely into either end of the spectrum. I think, like you describe, programming and coding are extremely valuable tools for all students and people alike. I myself want to learn more about coding so I have it as an elementary skill moving forward, and I think its application in the humanities can do great things for presenting one’s data to a larger audience. My agreement with Donahue’s essay is much more passive, in that I don’t think humanities students NEED to learn, because there are a multitude of ways to present one’s research that don’t involve coding (for example, I’m a CAMS major, so I’ve seen lots of short, academic films made by humanists to present their research findings and I think films work really well, and don’t require coding experience). After reading your reflective post, I’m not so sure how I feel about my own stance, and I credit your notion that “the interactive feature of DH projects attracts audiences to FULLY explore the ideas, and the visual presentation allows people to understand the concepts EASILY” as the grounds for my reflection.
Your computer programming experience really shows! I am still struggling with using CSS, but it seems that you already have a good control over it. I really like your point about how Digital Humanities increases the interactivity of a project, so it makes sense for students to learn how to code in order to interact more fully with information on computers.
It’s interesting to see a computer science student’s perspective on this debate, and I couldn’t agree more. CS mastery isn’t needed, but it’s worth learning the basics, at least. Having some experience will come in handy, as well!
I agree with this perspective. Even though I am not great at coding, nor do I enjoy it, I see it as a great benefit. Much like one of the commenters also noted, Mastery isn’t needed for a humanities student to see the benefits of coding and the potential it gives them.