I think that humanities students should at least have an introduction into what coding is and how it can be used in their fields. While it is almost certainly not a necessity to humanities scholarship in the 21st century, it is an extremely powerful tool that should not be ignored or written off as only valuable to STEM professionals and career programmers.
Knowledge of a foreign language is desirable so that a scholar does not have to rely exclusively on existing translations and so that the accuracy of others’ translations can be scrutinized.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Hello Worlds (why humanities students should learn to program)
Matthew Kirschenbaum states that knowledge of a relevant 2nd language can be very valuable to scholars, as it allows for the ability to not only utilize sources in their native languages, but engage in the scrutiny of translations that have already been published. Being able to engage with ones sources in such a manner is very important, and knowledge of coding allows for a similar relationship with projects far outside the reaches of traditional publishing. Especially for those hoping to make their work accessible through the internet, it is valuable to know enough about how websites work to scrutinize the projects of others, not only to determine where things could have been improved, but to learn new techniques to better their own online presence.
My past experiences with coding have been fairly minimal; other than CS 111-level python learned during the first term of online classes in 2020 and some sporadic uses of R, I know very little. Like anything complicated and technical, it can be quite frustrating to pick up in the beginning but I have found it to be ultimately rewarding upon reaching some level of understanding. In addition to the basic coding knowledge I gained during these experiences, the steep learning curve has forced me to be more collaborative in my learning than I would have been otherwise, which I believe has been important to my growth as a student.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My First Web Page</title>
<style>
p {
color: red;
}
a {
color: blue;
}
</style>
<body>
<p> Connor <b> <br> Connor </b> bold bold? </p>
</body>
</html>While experimenting with what I learned in the CSS tutorial, I found myself unable to change my font color using the internal CSS integration technique until I asked a knowledgeable friend for help. The frustration of getting stuck on something so simple was unpleasant, but it ultimately made figuring the problem out more satisfying since my now-functioning code was a sort of collaborative effort.
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I totally agree! I think it’s really important to understand how technology works. Nowadays, data is crucial, and big tech companies profit off of our own data. While this can be really beneficial in some situations, I think knowing how the exchange of data works, and how these platforms we interact with on a day-to-day basis is really important for not just knowledge purposes but also for privacy and security.