Coding is cool, but it is also so much more…

To be blunt, I think everyone should learn how to code regardless of whether or not they are humanities scholars. Not learning to code because it is daunting or inaccessible is a terrible excuse; in the advent of online communities, forums, and educational sites, you can easily learn how to code for free on your time.

Small rant aside, after reading both Kirschenbaum and Donahue’s pieces on the intersection between coding and humanities, I am inclined to side with Donahue’s position that while coding can be incredibly useful, (that its now wider accessibility is a good thing) it should not act as a barrier to understanding or interacting with computer science in general. In short, no, you shouldn’t need to learn how to code if you are a digital humanities scholar. However, I think the central issue with Kirschenbaum’s article is their emphasis on “coding” vs. the mathematics or processes behind coding. I’m sure that Kirschenbaum is probably a fine coder; however, I believe that Kirschenbaum’s understanding of coding appears to relatively superficial– he notes taking basic courses in BASIC and Pascal, which is equivalent to someone saying they understand machine learning because they can use the tensor-flow package. Kirschenbaum’s abstractions of programming as world-building are understandable in a very rudimentary sense. While it is true that virtual spaces are attempts at modeling the world, I think his snowball example captures a surface-level abstraction of virtual spaces. This is because I believe coding or programming itself to be a natural extension of mathematics; algorithms, machine learning, etc., are all based in mathematical or statistical proofs. If Kirschenbaum is willing to speak about modeling or rhetoric with regards to coding in general, then he must also address the fact that computer science is not inherently coding; it is design, mathematics, and modeling with code merely being the tool for engaging with these topics. Are these not, to some degree, the same ideals that the humanities are trying to explore? I am reminded of a quote by Donahue:

[Kirschenbaum] sells his argument short when he concludes that the modeling that happens in the computer embodies only a “familiar structure” for the linguist or textual scholar used to “models” of language and text. I would go further and argue that in many cases the computer sciences and the humanities are both engaged in the process of developing the very same models.

Evan Donahue “A “Hello World” Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program)”

Indeed, Donahue seems to grasp this idea of programming as a tool of computer science, but not computer science itself.

Well yes, I still stand by that statement; but I do think there is a difference between should code and needs to code. I argue that coding is at its most accessible right now and will only become more readily available to a general public as time goes on. But to restrict someone because they cannot code shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to engage in the computer sciences. Some of the best computer science mentors and professionals I have met began their coding experience in graduate school; computer science isn’t programming or coding, it is numerical and mathematical abstraction of real-world events. You aren’t a programmer because you can code;

<pre>
you are a programmer
because you can condense the world around you
and reconstruct it from its modular components
</pre>

In terms of my own experience with coding, I began coding as a freshman in high school and have taken up to database systems at Carleton. I code because I have always loved interacting with computers; my childhood was defined by a curiosity for anything digital, any artifact that could exist on a screen. Yet, I am now a statistics major with a background in film studies; I am confident that I can code a program in a variety of languages, but I do not think of myself as anything close to a computer scientist. Having worked in both social-based research groups and industrial software companies in the past, I now view code as an extension of skills, not as a skill itself. In any real-life coding environment, my coding skills are overshadowed by my critical thinking abilities, my statistical background, or my research skills. This is to again reiterate that coding should not be valued more than other humanities or non-programming skills; coding is merely the tool for creation, but it is not the means to creation itself. To create great works of programming, one must first understand the world around them through different lenses, not just through a screen or a keyboard.