Personally, I don’t think humanities students should or shouldn’t learn to code. I think that humanities students should explore the disciplines they are interested in, and coding is a very useful discipline for the future of the humanities. If a humanities student doesn’t want to learn to code, I don’t think they should be required to. If they choose to engage with some aspect of digital humanities, however, I do think humanities students should try to engage with understanding code or the logic behind the code. As Donahue’s essay “against”  Kirschenbaum’s essay states:

I chose this title not to argue against anything Kirschenbaum says, but rather to suggest that the manner in which he says it may be misleading if it is taken at its face value. While programming will indeed usefully equip one better to understand computer scientific discourses, it should NOT be taken as the necessary precondition to engaging with the computer sciences and all who consider themselves scholars of the humanities should realize that the discourse of programming is only the technical jargon with which computer scientists address many of the very same questions that one encounters every day in the humanities.

Evan Donahue, A “Hello World” Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program)

My Coding Experience

Entering Carleton, I thought I was going to be a computer science major. I had taken three computer science classes in high school and really enjoyed two of them. When taking my first Carleton CS class, I realized that CS without any interdisciplinary aspect or approach did not interest me and actually was frustrating and boring. Trying out HTML and CSS for this lab was really interesting for me as it engaged that visual, creative aspect that I find appealing.

While I’ve learned how to code in multiple languages, using HTML and CSS is a new experience for me that has plentiful applications for digital humanities. This is proof that knowledge of coding isn’t so black and white; you don’t have to learn how to do everything to achieve your goals, just what is applicable to you. Here’s my example of using the CODE block:

This is a code example
Here is a list of things I like:

    
Cats
    
Dogs
    
Crafting
    
Nature

Here's a list of my family's names, in order of age (oldest to youngest)

Erica
    
Bertoldo
    
Olivia
    
Nora
    
Emilia
    
  

The code behind it:

<b>
<h1> Code sample! </h1>
<h2>Examples</h2>
<pre>
This is a code example
Here is a list of things I like:
<ul>
    <li>Cats</li>
    <li>Dogs</li>
    <li>Crafting</li>
    <li>Nature</li>
</ul>
Here's a list of my family's names, in order of age (oldest to youngest)
<ol>
<li>Erica</li>
    <li>Bertoldo</li>
    <li>Olivia</li>
    <li>Nora</li>
    <li>Emilia</li>
    
</ol>  
</pre>
</b>