I support the idea that all humanities students should learn to program. As the use of computers as ways of communication continues to grow, I believe that humanities students should be enabled with the ability to create a digital project in any field, or students should at least understand how this mode of communication works at a basic level. Kirschenbaum argues, “Virtual worlds will be to the new century what cinema was to the last one and the novel to the century before that.” These “virtual worlds” or digital projects and sites for “exploration, simulation, play” are believed by Kirschenbaum to become as commonly used as are past popular forms of media such as books and movies, thus should be taken as seriously in academics. Evan Donahue, sharing a similar stance as Kirschenbuam, argues that “the discourse divide is not between the humanities and the computer sciences, but equally much between every subfield therein.” In other words, skills in programming could allow better connections between all fields of study through the use of digital programs. In addition, the use of programming is being found increasingly common in the workplace, so an understanding of basic programming may be a useful or at least looked upon fondly by a potential employer.
Before the past few activities that we’ve completed in class, I had no exposure to programming, yet I was curious about how things work in the “digital realm.” Even the most basic skills we learned gave me a better idea of how a program or website is created. As an example of a coding skill, I created a survey question with checkboxes.
