Coding as a Humanistic Tool

To Code or Not to Code

Based on the way the question “Should humanities students learn to code?” is framed, I certainly would answer yes. The primary reason I chose to attend Carleton College is because it is a high-level liberal arts school. A liberal arts education is founded upon exposure to a wide range of topics, which makes students more well-rounded. This same framework can be applied to humanities students. While it is not essential to learn, coding will improve students’ intellectual toolbox. If the question was reframed to “Should humanities students be required to learn to code?” my answer would flip. For hundreds of years, humanities scholars have thrived without coding and even computers at all. Still, I believe that all humanities students would benefit from learning at least the basics of coding, whether it be HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or another language. Being able to personally tailor how you present data is an extremely useful skill to have. With that, the amount of coding experience a humanities student should have does not need to be extensive at all. A basic to intermediate coding skillset is enough to enhance their work.

“Procedural literacy, which starts with exercises like making a snowball, will be essential if humanities students are to understand virtual worlds as rhetorical and ideological spaces, just as film and the novel are likewise understood as forms of representation and rhetoric”

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

My Experience

My personal experience with coding is limited to only the beginner HTML and CSS tutorials I followed for this assignment. Even this minimal exposure was revelatory. Coding requires thinking in short steps, anticipating mistakes, and recognizing how small changes impact a bigger outcome. These concepts are analogous to work in the humanities. Although I am very much still a beginner, I realize how even basic coding encourages the habits of procedural literacy that Kirschenbaum stresses within humanities.

Code

Basic HTML code presented on
<a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a>

This is a very, very basic example of HTML code. However, as of yesterday, I would have had no idea how to write this code or even predict the output. I look forward to advancing my limited coding knowledge in the near future and discovering how far it can take me as a humanities student.