I believe that coding, while a useful tool in creating websites or presenting findings digitally, is not necessary for everyone in the humanities. The reason why I believe this is because I feel the time spent learning to code must correspond to its usefulness, which is not always the case in every area of knowledge (i.e. philosophy, psychology, sociology). While digital tools and websites can help disseminate or visualize information, that does not encapsulate the jobs of artists, philosophers, and other areas that can and do work offline with people/theories. Overall, we understand and attain knowledge in many ways, and it can be more efficient if those who work best offline can feed their information for people who work better online to create a community that accounts for everyone’s strengths and viewpoints.
Similarly, while many of the humanities can function without coding or use specialized coders in conjunction with others, computer science also has components that reach beyond the technicalities of coding. Evan Donahue supports this concept in a blog post stating:
“[Coding] should NOT be taken as the necessary precondition to engaging with the computer sciences”.
Evan Donahue, A “Hello World” Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program)
In my own experience in computer science, concepts of AI, education, and art all can be useful tools within computer science that can allow us to present/gain information without the necessity of coding. From my background in Intro to Computer Science course and chats I have had with computer science faculty, I have learned that coding can be a good way to create your own solutions to problems, but sometimes we can take existing code and build upon it with other disciplines. In these scenarios, one may not need to understand how to code to achieve the uses of its technology. As I have become more informed with AI, I have also realized that sometimes we don’t know all of the inter-working of a computer or how it achieves its outputs, yet we can still utilize its outputs to create interdisciplinary advantages in humanistic studies.
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<h1>It is not necessary for everyone in the Humanities to code because . . . </h1>
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<li>It is efficient to allow those who do not want/like to code to work on different areas of specialization</li>
<li>Collaborative efforts between coders and non-coders can expand viewpoints and work</li>
<li>Coding is not the end all of digital science, and we can use many other tools like AI</li>
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