Oh boy have I had a week. On one hand, I completed the essays for my other classes over a month in advance to solely work on my final digital project. However, I also was a bit excited about getting to learn a bit of coding during this weeks module. During my three years at Rowan, my old roommate Bryan, and two other members of my weekly trivia group Daibak and Hunter have been Computer Science majors. Naturally, I’ve teased them dozens of times for their major being easy, that they simply have computers do all the work, and they never had the harrowing experience of having to write over 200 pages of essays and research papers like I have as a history major. They would of course, tease me back for being an old man who yammers on about Japanese history far too much. So, this week I was ready to code like a pro and finally be able to laugh at them for how easy it was. Boy, was I wrong, because my very short-and likely only-experience coding was more then enough for me for the rest of my life, my brain felt melted by the end.
I’ve gotten to the point in my schooling career, where I have to see practical uses in a skill or topic to have an enjoyable time in a lesson. Even after going through the hour long lesson, I really don’t see myself ever wanting to use or attempting to use coding again. It could have been that I didn’t pay close enough attention, but I don’t see myself ever having a use for the skill I learned. All other tools we’ve used in this class, I can point to practical uses I’ll possibly have for them later down the line, but the actual coding itself I simply don’t see myself ever using it again.
The first thing I’ll say, is that the interface itself when entering commands was a bit unsettling to me, all the commands and the speed at which they came back were overwhelming. The preciseness needed to enter commands, the large amount of text, the black background of the emulator, all of it I just found to at first be overwhelming, but then after I did learn a few command lines and really got to seeing the commands go through… I found myself bored. I understand of course, the purpose of coding in order to build different websites and programs, however, if I have the choice between coding to make my own site, or just using a pre-existing one, I’ll choose the latter.
I of course, during this entire time trying and failing to write code, messaged my friends on discord to apologize for every bit of teasing I ever did to them. There was one moment, where I was trying to type in a command “1s”, and it said it would help direct me I believe to a database. However, the command didn’t work. I tried “1s” at least a dozen times and was as frustrated as I could ever be. So, I messaged a screenshot of my code to my Computer Science friends asking what I was doing. My roommate texted back, “dude, that’s not a 1 it’s a lowercase l”. I was flabbergasted, I did not believe him at all until sure enough the command “ls” worked. I swear on my mother that the way it was presented looked like a 1, it was at that moment i decided, yeah coding isn’t for me.
I also, had trouble finding a way to connect or see the connection between the coding skill that I learned this week, to the article Amiee Knight we read this week. Right from the beginning, she describes how when writing her dissertation she was met with a ‘large and messy qualitative data set’, and from that point I was able to instantly connect to the reading due to the simple fact that I have had similar situations before. Last semester in writing my paper on the Meiji Restoration, I had a massive list of dates, troop numbers, GDP numbers etc, that I had an incredibly hard time keeping it all together.
I really enjoy the five point model, the ‘modes of inquiry’ as she described them. It reminds me of the scientific method, but for visualization. A quote at the end of the ‘sharpening the pencil’ section which was ‘I learned just how rigid and unused my creative muscles are’, was my favorite takeaway from the entire article.
It reminded me of this digital project I’m crafting now for our final project. I think it’s turning into more of a YouTube video series as opposed to a podcast. I have plenty of information to present, and while I will have a voice only option available, I think that my ‘creative muscles’ can be put to better use. One thing that I’ve done for better visualization, is I had an artist friend of mine draw a tiny character of me in samurai attire to have on screen with my commentary. He drew two different expressions of the same avatar, one simply talking, and the other pointing or ‘teaching’ what would be on screen behind him.
Now, while this doesn’t help visualize a ‘data set’, I feel it makes content online more engaging, it’s part of the reason I loved maps so much. Having pictures on screen, and even something as simple as a tiny version of me dressed as a samurai teaching about Japanese history can be what makes people enjoy learning about what I have to teach.
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