Since I know already know a bit of HTML, I opted to do a few of HTML Dog’s CSS and JavaScript tutorials. I’ve always been a bit stressed out by coding in an academic environment, because I’m often the last person to understand what is going on and I do better learning from W3Schools anyways.
While I do think most people should try to learn to code—it’s incredible useful in today’s society—I don’t like the idea that it as prerequisite to participating meaningfully in Digital Humanities or “regular” Humanities. I agree with Evan Donahue’s point that:
While programming will indeed usefully equip one better to understand computer scientific discourses, it should NOT be taken as the necessary precondition to engaging with the computer sciences and all who consider themselves scholars of the humanities should realize that the discourse of programming is only the technical jargon with which computer scientists address many of the very same questions that one encounters every day in the humanities.
As previously mentioned, I know coding basics. I think that knowledge makes me a better writer as it has taught me to be methodical and logical in my approach to arguments and editing. However, any “precondition” being used to gate keep a field rubs me the wrong way. Humanities students can continue to work in the humanities, and even become digital humanists, without being fluent in code. Programmers can continue to work in computer science and ALSO become digital humanists without knowing every single writing convention. We have the internet and each other to fill in the gaps.
CSS
While Javascript is interesting, I’ve always been particularly interested in CSS. I like graphic design and seeing exactly what I can make using code. I did the “Colors” tutorial, then used a W3Schools’ “Try It Editor“, which already had an example filled in that I then deleted and rewrote with my “Colors” code.
<pre>
body {
background-color: black;
}
h1 {
color: olive;
background-color: white
text-align: center;
font: times-new-roman;
}
p {
color: #331dde;
background-color: grey;
text-align: left;
}
</pre>After adding a heading <h1> and body <p> text, my site looked like this:
It’s a good thing graphic design is my passion, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to make such a beautiful site (just kidding).
But seriously. Not everyone has to know how to make text olive green and a background black to be in Digital Humanities. You just have to be willing to work as a team.
