As the world becomes more technologically advanced, there’s an increasing push for kids and students to start learning to write code at younger and younger ages. The image showed above is one of the top apps on the iOS store, and there’s way more available besides Lightbot that are accessible to people with smartphones and tablets. Although this push to program is strong, I’m inclined to agree with Evan Donahue’s blog post titled “A Hello World Apart (why humanities students should NOT learn to program), which was a response to University of Maryland Professor Matthew Kirschenbaum’s blog post titled “Hello Worlds (why humanities students should learn to program)” (Donahue’s article, Kirschenbaum’s article).
Learning to program is an incredibly useful skill, and as Donahue argues in their article, students (including humanities students) should learn how to program. However, as Donahue says: “they (students) should not let their inability to program prevent them from engaging with the computer sciences.” I think that programming has been a useful skill to learn, and pushed my problem solving and critical thinking skills. You don’t need programming skills to study or learn about the computer sciences, and I don’t think knowing how to write HTML, Python3, or any other programming language gives humanities students a great advantage over those that don’t know a programming language. Just because someone knows how to write a heading like <h1>My first web page</h1> doesn’t mean that they understand the computer sciences any better.
Before the tutorials I took for our most recent assignment, my prior coding experience has been in CS courses at Carleton. I took Introduction to Computer Science as well as Data Structures in the previous academic year, so I developed some skills in Python3 and Java. These prior experiences made the HTML, CSS, and Javascript tutorials much easier to understand. The Javascript tutorial was probably the easiest for me to follow since the language is very similar to Java, and I used the application IntelliJ IDEA CE to make writing HTML code a bit more fluid.
5 replies on “ShouldWeCode();”
I’ve never heard of the app you mentioned- that’s really cool! Makes me wonder how well future generations will develop these skills and if it’ll be as important as learning language at some point.
The app that you mentioned is very interesting. I didn’t realize there were coding apps designed for younger people. This really demonstrates the push for people to start learning programming at a young age.
Although I agree with the fact that programming isn’t necessary for humanities students, I think that in general, students who learn to program have more marketable skills than those who don’t. However, it’s definitely not necessary to learn how to program in order to be a successful humanities student.
I really agree with your statement that humanities students who know a little bit HTML or CSS have an advantage over those who don’t because knowing HTML and CSS doesn’t mean that understanding computer science. However, I think learning basic computer language can help humanities students to better understand the world around them because in the information era, it is really important to know the principle behind computers.
I really agree with your statement that humanities students who know a little bit HTML or CSS do not have an advantage over those who don’t because knowing HTML and CSS doesn’t mean that understanding computer science. However, I think learning basic computer language can help humanities students to better understand the world around them because in the information era, it is really important to know the principle behind computers.
Your screenshot of Lightbot is really nostalgic for me because I remember playing the game in my 8th-grade technology class. Although I don’t remember much of the coding involved, I do remember that it was extremely engaging and made the concept of coding less frightening. I agree with you that there is definitely a push to teach young kids how to code. However, I don’t know if it is such a bad thing to teach kids how to code since they essentially grow up surrounded by it.