Technology will only advance and these advancements to come in the future should be embraced. Humanities are all about learning about human culture, technology is and will continue to be prominent in our society. Humanities students should learn to code. Technology is at our fingertips and for that reason we should truly take advantage of this rich resource. I believe that people who refrain from getting more than aquatinted with technology lose the potential of gaining the opportunity to imagine and create even more. This avoid I feel stems from the fear of not knowing, the unknown is what most people fear. But when there is the exposure to the “unknown” and people begin to empathize, then there can be growth.
Matthew Kirschenbaum supports coding to be learned amongst humanities students, he stated on his post that “…more significantly, many of us in the humanities miss the extent to which programming is a creative and generative activity.” Learning how to code in fact opens up the facets to technology in which Humanities can glorify from. Growth and expansion to what one can do with the humanities should be supported and done. The concept of programming as Matthew Kirschenbaum continues discussing in his post is about “choices and constraints”, you have the power to choose how you model the world around you through the computer. The computer is a tool and an asset to the humanities that can cause a much greater impact through its usage.
My Coding experience with HTML & CSS so far was quite a breeze thanks to codecademy’s step by step process. The lessons that I went through for both HTML & CSS were quite simple and easy to follow along for each step. Learning to code through the utilization of this program makes it really intriguing to learn more and keep progressing through the courses. The amount of time that is spent when going through lessons is quite a bit all around because there is so many chapters to the courses, but the chapters themselves are quite short. When it came to JavaScript my experience began quite similarly as with HTML & CSS, but it soon became more confusing. There was a certain chapter to the JavaScript course where I was stuck for a good 20 minutes. The hints were’t really helping out, so I turned to staring at the screen hoping for something to happen. After attempting and attempting, I was still not able to progress on to the next lesson. I know that I will have to go back to codecademy and figure out where I was going wrong, and that’s okay. The art of coding is a progression, it is a craft that you have to continually put into practice.
There is so much to coding yet to learn and that is what intrigues me. Coding is so applicable to today because of the heavy technology influence that is at the heart of our world. There should be a push for all people to learn code, not just humanists.
Genesis,
I absolutely agree with the fact that the art of coding is a progression! Most of the things i learned so far were from trial and error. Although i did have trouble with some of the steps on codeacademy, they did structure the course pretty well for beginners.
Also, I wanted to ask, when you said “…this avoid i feel stems from the fear of not knowing, the unknown is what people fear the most.” When you refer to “people,” are you talking about a specific group? or just everyone who is not familiar with coding in general?
Selam,
I agree that Codecademy does do a really good job with demonstrating to beginners the art of coding.
When it comes to the comment I made on “the unknown is what people fear the most” I was simply making a generalization. To breakdown this generalization, the statement I made of fear of the unknown is exactly that, that people fear what they don’t know. As for “people”, I was referring to individuals who are unfamiliar with not just coding, but unfamiliar with anything in general.
Genesis,
I can totally see where you’re coming from. I think people can be afraid of the “unknown.” However, in this situation, I think learning to code is a privilege. And majority of people who know of coding wish to be knowledgeable in it. Nevertheless, not everyone knows of coding. Most times, not knowing is involuntary. For instance, many people in rural parts of Ethiopia do not know that computers exist, let alone coding. This, as you mentioned, contributes to their ignorance and holds them back from making societal advancements. But, their ignorance to coding is involuntary. Even in industrialized countries, where coding and computing is very common, many people do not go into it because the computer science field is perceived and often described as something only some people can do. It’s a “difficult” field of study and therefore it takes someone “intelligent” and “capable,” and that typically (thanks to gender/race biases and social constructs) means men. Usually, if we take a look at statistics of people who are in the computer science and coding field, we see that there is a huge racial and gender gap. We see that less women and people of color take part in the initiative because majority of the times, people, for reasons given above, are conditioned to think a certain way about who should hold a certain occupation by society.
That being said, privilege, accessibility, and society play a pivotal role in whether or not people learn to code or program. It is very situation and subjective. This is a broad and completely different argument but its very prevalent in our society yet often neglected in public dialogues.
Sorry for the typos. I meant:
it depends on people’s situation and people’s situation is subjective. Also, what i’m trying to say is that people can’t even be afraid of the “unknown” as you mentioned because they don’t even have the opportunity to fear. Some simply don’t know that coding is a thing and therefore can’t be afraid of it.
Selam,
I did not take into account the act of not knowing as being involuntary for a reason. The point that I was attempting to make when I said most people are afraid of the unknown comes from what I stated beforehand on avoid in regards to technology. When one avoids they are aware, and this is very dependent to situation, but in general are choosing to not get acquainted with learning or learning more. Whether it be by will or circumstance it is because of fear or simply indifference towards technology. Fear is very broad term which can also entail your comment on social constructs that I totally agree with. These social constructs arise a sense of intimidation on individuals who feel that there is only a certain group of people who can code. Intimidation ties in as being a fear and this fear for this example is one factor which impedes people to progress.
This one factor is what I was zooming into for the purpose of my point, but I definitely have reconsidered to take into account more perceptions rather than narrowing down to build a much stronger and valid point in the future.