As someone who is new to coding (besides Excel or SPSS these Stats-related coding), I used to think that coding is extremely hard and I would not be able to learn it. As a Psychology major, I would now call this type of thoughts “stereotypes”. Most of the time, “stereotypes” do not represent reality. Much ashamed of myself, I let this thought prevent me from taking a CS class for a long time. However, as I began to navigate through the process of basic coding, I realize its usefulness as a tool for humanity classes, computer science field, and almost all disciplines. I would agree with Matthew Kirschenbaum‘s argument that humanities student should learn to code. In fact, I think everyone should try to learn some coding regardless of their fields.

Matthew Kirschenbaum mentioned that coding is a lot like learning a language. We need to learn the computer science language’s syntax, content, and logic. I used to have this tremendous fear of learning how to code and believed that I would not be good at it. However, a little bit of exposure to basic programming and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum’s argument that learning coding is like learning a second language really shaped my opinions about programming. In my opinion, everyone should try to take a computer science class or find opportunities to be exposed to the programming language. In this way, beginners like me will find programming less scary. Hopefully, through some exposure to the language, more people will have an interest in learning to code.

In Matthew Kirschenbaum’s post, he also pointed out that programming is “a creative and generative activity”. When I designed my website for Positive Psychology, I realized the number of choices I can make about my own website. These choices ranging from formatting, displaying, and embedded interactive communications between the viewers and the creator. I think Kirschenbaum’s argument that programming is creative resonated with my personal experiences. Though computer science is still a novel field to me, I can see the room for creativity brought by various programming languages. Frankly, sometimes, humanities value creativity and originality and try to distinguish from rigid STEM methodologies. However, programming still gives people room for creativity and encourages originality. If humanities students cultivate interests in programming, they can use media and technology to help disperse scholar findings to a larger audience.