Learning to code has been really fun, and not only has it been fun but it has been educational. I think that humanities students should learn how to code because as we progress towards a more technologically advanced society. It is important that students of the digital humanities understand the digital aspect of their field and not just fully focus on the humanities aspect of their discipline. I think that programming will be helpful to anyone who is interested int the minutia of the humanities as both disciplines require an eye for detail the idea that coding is unimportant to the humanities is to me arrogant and it makes us, students of the humanities one-dimensional.
Kirschenbaum said “…many of us in the humanities miss the extent to which programming is a creative and generative activity…” I think this emphasize a very key misconception that Kirschenbaum themself talks about. That is, the misunderstanding that coding is a monotonous and under stimulating task that only those whose minds specialize in rigid blocks of categorization. (I should specify that when I mean “under stimulating” I mean it doesn’t stimulate the imagination, not that it doesn’t stimulate the mind.) I have found that coding is very fun. Which is quite frankly, a shock because I hated coding in high school, I thought the history was fun, but the actual writing made my brain hurt.
Coding has opened my eyes, and I’m very genuinely serious. I really liked coding in HTML and CSS for the first time I had a lot of fun. I picked it up very easily and it shocked me, I was so surprised. I think humanities students should learn because not only will it help in the short term in helping with projects and sorting of information and understanding search databases, but it will also help in the future when technology is even more inseparable from the human condition.
P.S. And it will be helpful when we are tasked with coding for our A.I overlords
Praise be to the Machine!!
