From my perspective, coding has real value for humanities students. I don’t think it should be treated as a strict requirement, but it can be a powerful tool for approaching humanities questions in new ways. Just learning the basics offers a powerful way to work with data, structure ideas, and approach problems differently. In the words of Kirschenbaum,
To code is to imagine the world differently.
As a junior computer science major, coding has been a very large part of my life. When I first tried it, the mix of logic, structure, and creativity felt natural to me. Since then, I’ve been building on that foundation with practice problems as well as larger projects. I’ve also applied HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create interactive applications in R for statistics classes, which showed me how code can bridge analysis and presentation in practical ways. That background makes me lean toward the “yes” side of this debate. I don’t think coding should be replacing interpretation in the humanities, but it can definitely open the door to many possibilities.
This didn’t work how I thought it would but its pretty cool anyway lol
<body>
<h2 style="text-align:center;">Hello Worldddd</h2>
<script>
setInterval(() => {
document.body.style.backgroundColor =
"#" + Math.floor(Math.random()*16777215).toString(16);
}, 500);
</script>
</body>4 thoughts on “My Take on Coding and the Humanities”
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Hi Daya!
It is interesting to me that we are on opposite sides of the spectrum. I am a humanities student hoping to learn how technology can aid my learning of humanities, while you are a computer science student who likely wants to learn how to apply your prior knowledge of computer science into a humanities project. I think having these different backgrounds is essential, especially as digital humanities is an inherently collaborative field.
Hello Daya, really nice blog post. I agree with your statement about how coding can allow humanities students to approach problems in new ways. Many problems within the field of humanities definitely lend themselves towards being approached with a computational lens. Also, your use of JavaScript to make the blog background change to a random color is very creative! I was surprised when I opened your post.
What’s up Daya! nice blog post. I agree with you that coding holds a lot of value to humanities students. It allows them to think outside the box and use technology as a tool to their aid. I think it’s cool that your post is flashing different colors. I’ll definitely take a closer look at the code and see if I can do the same thing.
I clicked on this post and immediately knew that there is some fun things going on in the background. I like the flashing colors. It is a fun experiment but depending on the content, might want to keep things more muted to not distract, but I really like it. Your experience with coding is unique, and it is good that the logic and structural elements of coding were things to draw you in. If you compare two students with identical backgrounds, but one knows coding and the other does not, there is a clear advantage. Like you mentioned, it definitely opens a lot of possibilities.