A Case For Programing

I back Matthew Kirschenbaum’s opinion that humanities students should learn how to program. Humanities work to create a world, by using rich descriptive language and other text. With evolving technologies humanities scholars are having to shift to the tools that allow them to make the best and most accessible work. Just as humanities papers shifted from written, to typewritten, to online; the projects have been will continue to shift and morph with the better tools. “It used to be that we in English departments were fond of saying there was nothing outside of the text. Increasingly, though, texts take the form of worlds as much as words. Worlds are emerging as the consummate genre of the new century, whether it’s the virtual worlds of Second Life or World of Warcraft or the more specialized venues seen in high-end simulation and visualization environments.”  The vast amount of free and accessible resources to learn how to program are trivializing excuses of ignorance. Everyday programing is becoming more and more accessible and easy to use. There is reason programmers are being chosen over direct majors for research positions and jobs. Not knowing how to program gives up your seat at the table of the future of Humanities.

When I was 14 taught my self how to program using free and available resources. At no point did it just click or was it a fluid process, but I continued to work just like any new thing. A lot of people like to classify themselves as not programming people after trying for an hour or so. What’s not see is the hours most “programming people” people put in and worked learning. Here is a snippet out of a program with a new programming language, Solidity, I’m learning.

<pre>

function winningProposal() constant
returns (uint winningProposal)
{
uint winningVoteCount = 0;
for (uint p = 0; p < proposals.length; p++) {
if (proposals[p].voteCount > winningVoteCount) {
winningVoteCount = proposals[p].voteCount;
winningProposal = p;
}
}
}

</pre>

Author: schifferc