reflective blog 2

Why coding?

I believe that humanities students should learn to code, and coding is incredibly helpful for their studies.

In an increasingly digital and interconnected world, the integration of coding skills into the curriculum for humanities students is becoming more crucial than ever. Kirschenbaum from university of Maryland points out a curial point: computer programs are not black boxes. Humanity students should never assume coding is hard or coding is none of their business. In fact, hybrid of technology and humanities are becoming more and more inevitable. The only way to know something is to try and learn about the basics.

Computers should not be black boxes but rather understood as engines for creating powerful and persuasive models of the world around us.

Kirschenbaum, Matt. Hello Worlds (Why Humanities Students Should Learn to Program), 26 May 2010, mkirschenbaum.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/hello-worlds/

Apart from the necessity of learning coding i mentioned above, programming is beneficial to humanity in many ways. It provides the brand new perspective for approaching certain questions. the logic is pretty straightforward: if you don’t now something could be done this way, i won’t be able to merge it into your daily studies.

Consider the handling of data, for instance. In the contemporary landscape, information inundates virtually every field. The skill of intelligently processing data has emerged as a crucial aspect of humanities research. Learning to code empowers humanities students to automate repetitive tasks, efficiently manipulate data, and visually represent complex information, ultimately refining their research methodologies. The integration of coding into the humanities curriculum promotes a holistic and adaptive approach to academic inquiry.

personal coding experience：

My first exposure to programming was in high school. Since I was part of the high school robotics team, I learned how to write programs in java for the robot to execute. I also learned to build psychological experiments using python. Last term, I took the CS201 Data Structures and learned about all the different ways information can be stored and used by programs. Also, I learned a lot of web related knowledge in this class. In a nutshell, I believe that knowing how to program has had a huge impact on the way I think of the world; and I fully realized how programming is playing a essential role in every field I am interested in. In fact, I’m seriously thinking about the double majoring in computer science.

example codes:

public class BST<K extends Comparable<K>, V> {
    private Node root;
    
    private class Node {
        private K key;
        private V value;
        private Node left;
        private Node right;
        private Node(K key, V value) {
            this.key = key;
            this.value = value;
            this.left = null;
            this.right = null;
        }
    }
    
    public BST() {
        root = null;
    }