BLOG POST WEEK 3: Should  humanities students learn to code

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/. 

After reading Hello Worlds (why humanities students should learn to program) by Matt Kirschenbaum, I sympathized with Kirschenbaum’s argument that humanities students should learn to code. In the reading, Kirschenbaum explained how he was an English major who took computer programming courses. After taking the course, he realized that programming is a creative and generative activity where you learn to build models instead of learning to manage a hardware store. I find the most compelling element of Kirschenbaum’s argument perfectly summarized in the quote above that it is important for us to utilize the technology we have to deepen our understanding of the world. I strongly agree with Kirschenbaum’s claim and believe that learning to code will lead to a wide range of advantages such as interdisciplinary collaboration, development of critical thinking skills, and continuation of evolution.

I believe that coding serves as a bridge between humanities and technology. Having the skill to code could lead to several benefits in the context of digital humanities as technology is used to analyze data for stuff like DH projects. As we have explored recently, the use of technology is key in the Humanities project. For example, the DH project I looked into was the Rythm of Food project. This was a project that presented us with the trends of food and recipes. To present the data, the author and team of the project used several technologies such as Google Trends for the trend data, Google Knowledge Graph topics (which distinguishes e.g. “Apple computers” from the fruit), and finally use of coding language to create a website. Therefore, it shows how not only technology but learning how to code is important for humanities students. In addition, learning to code goes beyond the technical aspects as it improves critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Writing code involves breaking down complex problems into smaller, manageable components and devising logical solutions. This is a critical skill that can be transferred to anything not just humanities study. Lastly, I wanted to point out how the world is always continuing to evolve as everything around us become more advanced and filled with technology. I believe that it is important for us to continue evolving and adapting to this fast-paced change by acknowledging technology and being familiar with code.

As I have mentioned in the previous paragraph, I believe that it is important for us to adapt to this changing environment by being on the front line of technology. That is what motivated me to become a computer science major here at Carleton and continue to take different coding courses. While I am not able to confidently say that am I a coding expert and fully understand all the different coding languages my classes have introduced to us, they have allowed me to develop critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills. As I explore various coding languages, I gain insights into the logical reasoning embedded in the code, enabling me to seamlessly apply and adapt these principles across different programming languages. I am currently enrolled in a class called Programming Language and in this course, I have so far learned about a language called Scheme. In the assignments of the Scheme, I realized how my coding experience from my previous classes has made it easier for me to learn a new language as I can apply the problem-solving skills I learned from Java and Python.

;;; 5.1. sum. This function will find the sum of the numbers in the list

(define sum
  (lambda (lst)
    (if (null? lst)
	0
	(+ (car lst) (sum (cdr lst))))))

;;; 5.2. keep-first-n. This function will return the first n number of letters in the list from the n and list you specify in the input.

(define (keep-first-n n lst)
  (cond ((= n 0) '())
	((or (< n 0) (> n (length lst))) '())
	(else (cons (car lst)
		    (keep-first-n (- n 1) (cdr lst))))))

These codes are codes of Scheme where I created a function where one finds the sum of the numbers in the list and the other one returns the first n number of letters in the list from the n and list you specify in the input. Although I was not familiar with Scheme at all as I only learned about it for a few days, I was able to complete this code since I have done similar code before in another programming language.