Should all humanities students learn to code? No, programming should not be mandatory. Will humanities students benefit tremendously from learning to code? Definitely.
Computers should not be black boxes but rather understood as engines for creating powerful and persuasive models of the world around us. The world around us (and inside us) is something we in the humanities have been interested in for a very long time.
Matthew Kirschenbaum, “Hello Worlds (why humanities students should learn to program)”, May 23, 2013.
I started coding when I was 14 years old, and it changed my life. I started with C, HTML, and CSS, and now I also know Python and Typescript. As time goes by, I am further fascinated with coding and all the opportunities and experiences I had because of it. When I was a senior in high school, I did the digital inventory for the local museum; in my Carleton on-campus job, I developed new features for the college’s websites; in my internship, I experienced how it was like to work for a huge company. Moreover, I am always learning something new coding related, like today in my software design class, I learned to use python arg parse:
def get_parsed_arguments():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Process books.csv using a keyword from the title, an author, or a range of publication')
parser.add_argument('--book', '-b', nargs=1, metavar='S', help='print a list of books whose titles contain the string S')
parser.add_argument('--author', '-a', nargs=1, metavar='S', help='print a list of authors whose names contain the string S')
parsed_arguments = parser.parse_args()
return parsed_argumentsIt is evident that I enjoyed and benefited from knowing how to code and that if humanities students knew how to code, they would have a better understanding of the world and be empowered to pursue all kinds of projects. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that everyone should learn how to code; people should always have a choice.
