I’ve recently read arguments both in favor of and against the idea of humanities students and scholars learning to code. I think they should – at least the very basics.

My main takeaway from the arguments in favor of this position has to do with looking at computers as complex tools to help us create new worlds as well as model our own – interests shared by those in the humanities. “Computers should not be black boxes but rather understood as engines for creating powerful and persuasive models of the world around us” (Matthew Kirschenbaum).

On the other hand, Evan Donahue argues not that humanities people should not learn to code, but that the humanities and the computer sciences are actually just two approaches towards achieving the same goals – “in many cases the computer sciences and the humanities are both engaged in the process of developing the very same models” – and that therefore, it is not necessary that humanities people should learn to code since, in the big picture, they are working on the same things anyway.

I think that these arguments are more similar than they are different, and I find the arguments in favor of learning to code much more compelling. Just because coding is another tool to accomplish many of the same goals that humanists set out to achieve does not mean it can’t be a tool helpful in ways different than those tools used conventional humanities. This goes both ways, too: I am also in favor of computer scientists being comfortable with things like literary analysis of texts, as one example. That’s not to say that I think every humanities student should add a CS minor and that everyone should master the skill of programming, but I think having an understanding of computers and at least a basic ability to utilize them as a tool is incredibly helpful in any field, very much including the humanities.

In terms of my own experience writing code, I’ve been doing it for a few years now and will continue to do so for a career. I’ve taken many programming related classes in college (though none before then!) and had jobs doing web development the last couple of summers, so I know that it may be difficult to argue on behalf of those with no experience whatsoever to learn some coding skills. However, I can think back to my first few days of coding python back in freshman year, and I remember my attitude towards computers changing from that of the “black box” described by Kirschenbaum, to something much more approachable. This was, in part, thanks to the natural-language-like syntax of python:

for number in range(1, 11): 
 print(number) 

The above code would print the numbers 1 through 10 to the screen, and I think most people could figure out that that is the gist (though the 11 vs 10 might be confusing). Python gets rid a lot of the annoying syntax of other languages like braces and more parentheses that bog down a lot of new programmers. Though I think python is a great language to start learning that is not my point here. Many other popular languages also have natural-language-like elements. My point is that learning a little bit of code, which is generally not as daunting as it may seem, will, if nothing else, change your attitude towards code and computers from a black box used by people worlds different than you, to a tool that even you can use!