I believe that humanities students should learn to code. I come from a more technical background, so I can’t speak to the point of view from a humanities student, but I do think it a useful tool that can teach critical thinking and improve digital literacy. I took my first computer science class senior year of high school and really enjoyed it. I went on to take data structures during my first year in college, before becoming a statistics major. I’ve really enjoyed my computer science courses though, and hope to take more. I have mostly taken classes in Java, Python, and R.
I found Matthew Kirschenbaum’s article very interesting, especially how he drew parallels between humanities and coding. He reflects on his own experience coding while being an English professor, and explains why coding is such a valuable skill. He explains:
I believe that, increasingly, an appreciation of how complex ideas can be imagined and expressed as a set of formal procedures — rules, models, algorithms — in the virtual space of a computer will be an essential element of a humanities education.
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Computational thinking is very beneficial to humanities students. Coding is more than just an action, but a way of thinking. Having coding experience will allow humanities students to stretch their thinking in new ways. Even a simple statement like “hello world” in python, which is shown below, raises questions for a programmer.
print("hello world")
Kirschenbaum explains how you are only printing two words, but so much more is happening. For example, who is doing the greeting and who is being greeted.
Overall, while coding may not always be necessary for humanities students, it is a very useful skill that creates benefits outside of just writing computer programs. It can help with expressing ideas in new or creative ways or create interesting visualizations in digital humanities. Technology is developing rapidly, and just having the ability to code is incredibly beneficial.
