Thus, students should learn to program, but they should not let their inability to program prevent them from engaging with the computer sciences.
Donahue. “A ‘Hello World’ Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program).” 28 May 2010
My Position
Regarding whether I think humanities students should learn to code, I strongly believe “yes.” Then again, my opinion is biased because my prospective major is computer science. However, I just don’t see any downsides to learning how to code. I think it could only benefit humanities students or even everyone. Sure, learning your first programming language could be a struggle, but being able to have a basic knowledge of programming could boost team communication, opportunities given to you, problem-solving skills, etc. Also, while humanities projects are typically completed in groups, and while you could technically delegate all coding to your team’s designated “coder,” wouldn’t you like to know exactly what is going on within the code?
Prior Coding Experience
Before attending Carleton, my knowledge of programming languages and coding was nonexistent. I knew absolutely nothing. Coming into Carleton, I wanted to give CS a shot, so I took my first-ever CS course last term, “CS 111: Intro to Computer Science,” where I was introduced to Python. I had a blast, sort of. There were definitely struggles and long hours in Olin 310 getting help from lab assistants. But once you ran that pytest, and it all came back green, it was pure Nirvana! Now, I am in my second term at Carleton and taking “CS 201: Data Structures,” where I have to learn Java. I will not lie; it started out rough, and the new syntax was not my friend. But, after a while, I got used to it. I’m not saying I’m a pro at Java or anything, but it has become more manageable. Going forward, I plan on hopefully having a CS course every term, but that’s not entirely up to me, so we’ll see.
Coding in HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title> This is where you input the title </title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is the first line of my body</p>
<p>This is the second and last line of my body</p>
<P>I lied, this is the last line, TOODALOO!!</p>
</body>
</html>3 thoughts on “print(“Hello World!”) or simple Hello World?”
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Hi first of all I really like your title, which is the main reason I wanted to leave a comment. However, you could have made it more specific why humanities students should code; I hold the same opinion, but you were more of describing the general benefits to code, not for humanities students. Anyway I like you blog very much.
First of all, I love your title and the amount of personality you put into this blog post. I’m still working on seeing the blog posts less as academic writing so it’s cool to see someone has made that jump already. I’m also a (prospective) computer science major but I actually don’t think that humanities majors should be required to code. Regardless of if it’s difficult or easy and even if it will probably benefit them in the future, I think everyone should be able to choose what they want to learn, or not learn in this case.
I think you have a solid argument, and I really like your personal perspective on the issue as someone beginning to code. I think one of the main tensions in this discussion is whether or not humanities students should leave the coding to someone they collaborate with, and although I argued the “yes they can leave it to someone else and shouldn’t be required to learn” side of it, you have a valid point in that it’s important to understand what is going on inside the project and that computer science shouldn’t be a black box to humanities students.