“All programming entails world-making, as the ritual act of writing and running Hello World reminds us.”
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
This quote from Kirschenbaum resonated with me. Earlier in the article, he highlighted the balance between creativity and precision required in programming. The smallest choices or mistakes can greatly influence a project’s outcome. However, creativity is endless when you write a program. One can quite literally create digital worlds to do whatever you want. Every year I see more and more advancemants in technology and while I may be biased as a CS major, I think all humanities should learn how to code (at least the basics) to better understand the ever-evolving tech world that we live in.
Kirschenbaum reminded me of when I first learned to code two years ago in Intro to CS where I learned Python. My computer became a canvas for endless creativity. In later computer science courses, I began to appreciate the attention to detail required in coding. At this point, I’ve spent hours writing, thinking about, and debugging code. This has not always been fun, but I have been able to be as creative as I’ve wanted while also gaining a deeper understanding into the tech world.
I’ve noticed that more conceptual skills that I picked up in CS courses align well with critical thinking skills I’ve picked up in humanities courses. Before college, my only coding experience was with Scratch (which I barely think counts now). Throughout my time at Carleton I have taken CS classes alongside a bunch of classes in many other departments. When writing a program, one must be able to take abstract ideas and transform them into structured code. These skills from CS courses alongside the more interpretive and analytical skills I’ve picked up in other humanities courses have prepared me for any other course I could potentially take and has given me a range of perspective. I think at the bare minimum an introductory computer science course should be required for humanities students. Coding is a way to explore and model the world, and is a way to model/view the digital and human-essential for any humanities student in this day and age.
Below is a bit of code I just wrote for a simple page:
<title>Coding in the Humanities</title>
<style>
body {
align-items: center;
margin: 0;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
}
h1 {
text-align: center;
color: #337;
}
p {
text-align: center;
color: #333;
}
.blue-text {
color: blue;
}
.red-underlined {
color: red;
text-decoration: underline;
font-size: 2em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Coding?</h1>
<p class="blue-text">I did this in a few minutes, imagine what someone with more time could do.</p>
<p class="red-underlined">ALL HUMANTIES STUDENTS SHOULD LEARN TO CODE</p>
</body>
</html>2 thoughts on “Lab 2”
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Hey Alex, I definitely agree that there is a lot of creativity involved when coding a program! Before I became a computer science major, I feel like I really underestimated the degree to which creativity is utilized in this field. Furthermore, some of my first experiences with coding was also through Scratch! I think Scratch is actually very useful for getting younger students thinking about the structure of code. I think it’s a great introduction for people who are hesitant to learn to code but find the idea of it to be interesting.
I appreciate your perspectives on coding. The process of coding is very creative. After learning CS, I realized that so many things can be achieved through coding, like data storage and visualization, puzzle solving, and gaming. It not only develops creativity but also other skills like problem-solving. Writing and debugging code repeatedly requires a lot of patience. Most of these skills are useful for humanities students.