DH + CS Musings and Web Development Tutorials

// Your First Program

class HelloWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello, World!"); 
    }
}

Should DH Students Learn to Code?

The debate whether or not digital humanities students (or scholars, for that matter) should learn to code was a major talking point in class on Thursday. My thought process on this question was pretty much all-or-nothing. I originally viewed the question as “should digital humanities students be masters of software, or should they not learn at all?” As such, I originally answered no because I felt that humanistic researchers don’t necessarily need CS knowledge to do their work, and if they want to use computers to analyze or present their data, they can team up with programmers. But during class, a lot of you pointed out that learning to code doesn’t only mean majoring in computer science.

Students can learn only the basics of computer science and still hold a conversation with someone who is an expert in the field, and this idea changed my mind. I now think that a baseline level of knowledge in computers science is essential to navigating most fields of academia in the modern world. I think professor Kirschenbaum at the University of Maryland put it well when he said “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.”

My Experience with Coding

During the summer of my senior year of high school, I expected to come to Carleton and major in computer science. I had (and still have) a very strong interest in computers, and I liked the idea of logical problem solving, so I figured CS was a good fit for me. Long story short, I took intro and loved it, I took Data Structures and liked it less but still wanted to continue, then I took Software Design and realized that that subject isn’t really for me. But while I didn’t end up wanting to major in CS, I learned a lot of useful skills. I now know the basics of CS as a whole (what an if statement is, what loops are, and so on) and I’m proficient in Python and Java.