Lab 2 – To code or not to code

As a computer science major my views maybe a little biased but I think that it is important that every DH person learns a little programming because in the DH community I believe an important aspect of the DH community is creating things yourself and creativity. With programming you can be as creative as you want and show off your DH projects in a way that you envision it not being barred by third party programs and their paywalls or inabilitites to create things in a way that you want. I beleive the quote below perfectly sums up my opinions about programming and creativity.

Code work blends functional computer code with creative composition

https://mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/hello-worlds/

As a computer science major I have spent so much time programming and what makes me love it so much is the problem solving behind it and how applicable it is to so many things that I love. While its frustrating debugging 100s of lines of code, once you squash that bug the rush of dopamine is amazing and makes me want to keep on coding. Coding is really an amalgamation of so many different topics because it is behind this very website we use and the apps we scroll on everyday. Coding is awesome because its so important in everyday life and it is the perfect way to stimulate my brain with debugging and the problem solving neccessary to code. Here is an example of something I had to code for my CS208 class.

int parse_stats(char *file_name, line_stats_t stats[])
{
    int lines = 0;
    FILE *input_file = fopen(file_name, "r");
    if(input_file == NULL){
        return -1; 
    }
    char ch = fgetc(input_file);
    stats[lines].first = ch;
    int count = 1;
    char prev;
    while(ch != EOF){
        if(ch == '\n'){
            if(count == 1 || (ch == EOF && prev == '\n')){
                stats[lines].last = '\0';
                stats[lines].first = '\0';
                stats[lines].length = 0;
            }
            else{
                stats[lines].last = prev;
                stats[lines].length = count - 1;
            }
            lines++;
            count = 1;
            if(ch == EOF){
                break;
            }
            ch = fgetc(input_file);
            stats[lines].first = ch;
            continue;
        }
        count++;
        prev = ch;
        ch = fgetc(input_file);
    }
    stats[lines].last = prev;
    stats[lines].length = count - 1;
    lines++;
    if(ferror(input_file)){
        fclose(input_file);
        return -1;
    }
    fclose(input_file);

    return lines;
}