Many of us in the humanities think our colleagues across the campus in the computer-science department spend most of their time debugging software. This is no more true than the notion that English professors spend most of their time correcting people’s grammar and spelling.
Kirschenbaum, Mathew. “Hello Worlds (Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program).” 2010, https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/hello-worlds/. Accessed 2024.
Humanities students should learn the basics of coding. Today, academic disciplines are increasingly interdisciplinary—especially in the humanities—and understanding the fundamentals of another field fosters potential collaboration and clearer, efficient communication. One of the humanities’ greatest challenges is its abstract nature and difficulty in visualization, which often leads to miscommunication between scholars and the general public. As Kirschenbaum describes above, stereotypes and misunderstandings between disciplines are common. However, by learning about other fields and utilizing visualization or representation formats, we can bridge these gaps and reduce miscommunication
Coding forms the foundation of technological visualization tools. You might think, ‘But what if I’m not using technology? I’ll just do it by hand!’ Let’s be real—avoiding technology will only create unnecessary work. By understanding the basics of coding, scholars can better grasp the tools they’re using, including their potential and limitations. This knowledge also allows humanities scholars to collaborate more effectively with professionals in technological fields, bridging the gap between disciplines and fostering more efficient teamwork
Learning the basics is a rather straightforward process. For instance, for this lab, we went through two coding adjacent tutorials which took approximately 1-2 hours. With this minimal time investment, we learned the basics of two scripting languages which will aid our understanding of website development moving forward in this class. This is the same for humanities scholars- that 1-2 hours time investment in learning the basics will be worth the final return.
Now, I’m realizing what I’m about to say may break my argument from the previous paragraph- I’ve taken Intro to CS. So yes, the tutorials might’ve been slightly easier for me to interpret because I have some background, but that background was in a completely different coding language (Python). As someone who took CS111 because they were out of options, python has randomly helped me in many situations. When I started working with ArcGis Pro, it helped me understand what was going on on the page when it was a complete jumble of items(it has a Python edit page). Knowing Python also helped me learn R for statistics- the point is, coding is applicable in so many fields, might as well learn the basics of it, it’s not terribly hard.
For example, knowing some form of coding can help you understand what I’m trying to say in this segment:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title> My cool idea for an artistic sentence </title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My cool idea for an artistic sentence</h1>
<p>You see, it would be annoying hard for me to explain all this to you:</p>
<p> This <strong>is</strong> my <em>sentenceeeeee</em>, it is <em><strong>speciallll</strong></em> </p>
<p>Wouldn't you agree?</p>
<p><input type="checkbox"> yes</p>
<input type="checkbox"> absolutely yes
</body>
</html>
1 thought on “Should Humanities Scholors learn to Code? Lab 2- Week 2”
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You point out the power that learning to code has when bridging the gap of miscommunication between researchers, which I find very interesting! Especially when it comes to creating visualizations for humanistic research, it is imperative that humanities students understand what it is that they are making and asking for. Not only that, but coding can provide a basis for humanities students to work on projects solo instead of relying on others. Great code by the way!