Studying the humanities requires diving deeply into discussions of our world. Being able to express the ideas that spring from these discussions in words is an integral part of the field of humanities. Being able to express those ideas through other formats like data visualization or web development could be a great way for students of the humanities to make their work more accessible and widespread. I don’t think humanities students should be required to learn how to program because diving deeply into one department is already a giant task. At the same time, a humanities student who also has the logical problem-solving ability and the expertise of a computer scientist could express their ideas in many formats other than just words. In short, if a humanities student is interested and sees that their work could benefit from programming knowledge and more digital literacy, then I would encourage that student to look it.
Computers should not be black boxes but rather understood as engines for creating powerful and persuasive models of the world around us.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. Hello Worlds (Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program). 26 May 2010, https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/hello-worlds/.
Humanities students also don’t need to learn to code to be able to expand the formats in which they can put their work on the internet. There are a variety of accessible web development and data visualization tools that anyone can learn to use pretty quickly without computer science knowledge. I would argue that instead of knowing how to code, it is much more important that every student is internet/computer-literate. For example, why bother learning how to put a background behind your webpage when Squarespace or Wix can do it for you?
body {
background: white
url(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSkMy1Gshuszybw2Nw5GMLzDsvrrpaCKrqEazHtv8VctQ&s) no-repeat top right;
}
//if all you need is a nice webpage, why learn this
when a website can do it for you?My prior coding experience consists of Python, C#, and as of this fall, a little bit of Java. In high school I was taught the basics of programming logic through Python. I took a game design class during my junior year, using C# in tandem with Unity Game Engine. I really enjoyed the possibilities that came with Unity, so I spent a lot of time learning C# while doing work for that class. Now I feel that I have pretty strong understanding of the basic logic behind some coding languages, so learning new ones shouldn’t be as hard.
