These coding assignments are the first ones that I have ever completed and it was an interesting experience. It was a mixture between fun and frustration trying to create the HTML page from scratch especially the CSS section. I was having incredible difficulty with adding fonts and background colors on my page. The tutorial in general was super helpful and I was able to rush through most of the page but there were instances like the font and border when I needed an external video for help. There was an obvious difference in difficulty between the two skills assessments. Thinglink was much easier of a project to complete because much of the work was obvious and easy to use with the site. Creating a page and trying to understand how the language interacted with itself was challenging.
Now that I have my own personal experience with a coding language I think that Evan Donahue is absolutely correct with his opinion. Yes coding is extremely important but, it is not a prerequisite to engage in computer sciences. Coding is just the unique language of the computer sciences but it is only a small part of the much larger subject. This quote from Donahue perfectly sums that up “While programming will indeed usefully equip one better to understand computer scientific discourses, it should NOT be taken as the necessary precondition to engaging with the computer sciences and all who consider themselves scholars of the humanities should realize that the discourse of programming is only the technical jargon with which computer scientists address many of the very same questions that one encounters every day in the humanities.” People should be encouraged to take at least some credits in the computer sciences but coding should only be one of the options. The important parts of computer science are exploration of algorithms, data structures, computational thinking, and problem solving methods. I think humanities students are able to grasp the concept and see the human aspect of computer sciences without the language aspect. Even without coding proficiency people studying philosophy can appreciate the morality of computers for example.
I still believe there should be a link between humanities and computer sciences because collaborating between diverse fields most of the times opens students up to all new kinds of learning. I just believe that link certainly doesn’t need to be coding and could be a range of options.
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