This is where I talk mainly about the past then JavaScript
While I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, I have been learning about coding and programming since my Senior year of high school, so I’m knowledgeable about it. Before this class, I did study CSS and HTML in a classroom context, where I’d use Dreamweaver as my vessel. On my off time from school, I’d learn about JavaScript, but didn’t care much since I’m after the languages like Java and C++. But now, rekindling my knowledge with this class helps me understand new contexts of the language, JavaScript. For example, since it is a scripting language, while it won’t be able to do everything the object oriented languages will do, it’s still necessary to understand if you want to be paid for your coding work. It might not be great for video games, but lots of businesses are looking for expert web designers, so it’s a worthy cause.
Here’s some code from a concurrent project I’m working on.
public class TypedRPG {
private String charName; //Name of character
private int health; //The amount of health a character has.
private int defense; //The amount of protection had during an attack.
private int accuracy; //The chances of an attack landing.
//private boolean isDead;
public TypedRPG(String charName, int health, int defense, int accuracy){
this.charName = charName;
this.health = health;
this.defense = defense;
this.accuracy = accuracy;
}
To program or not to program? That’s the question.
I think Evan Donahue’s response article is an extension of Matthew Kirschenbaum’s essay. I don’t think the debate between the two exists but is, instead, an exercise to arrive at what it means to program, from the humanities’ perspective at least. But should humanities students learn to program? No, they don’t need to because they could connect with an expert to build their digital humanities projects. However, since the humanities people insist on learning as much as they can, I think it’s an interesting idea for me to discuss!
I feel that if a scholar is going to approach digital humanities, they should have a successful hands-on experience with programming to understand the potential limitations of their own work and have a direct impact on what they create.
…There is even a field known as software forensics, in which quirks and tics in a suspect program’s language (the source code of a virus, say) are exploited to trace them to an individual human author, much like forensic linguists exploit stylistic features to attribute anonymous texts.
The comparisons made between programming and humanities by Kirschenbaum shows the human origins of both, where biases, ideas, and life experiences can be found, such as the above quote.
Learn to program whenever it is convenient, but start thinking about the computer sciences as relevant areas of concern right now.
This is the crux of Donahue’s argument as I see it; it’s that computer science must be understood, but programming should not need to be learned. I completely agree with this, but I still think hands-on experience will certainly help that understanding.
I like some of your points in your first paragraph and I think you make an interesting point when you say that you believe that debate between the sides of each paper does not exist. I too believe that while scholars of humanities don’t NEED to learn programming, it is probably beneficial to them that they learn.