Lab 2: Web Development (Tripp Tokioka)

After learning the basics of HTML, I believe humanities students should have to learn coding to some degree. I agree with Kirschenbaum’s premise in his “Hello Worlds” article.

Many of us in the humanities think our colleagues across the campus in the computer-science department spend most of their time debugging software. This is no more true than the notion that English professors spend most of their time correcting people’s grammar and spelling

Matthew Kirschenbaum

This quote resonated with me because it reminded me that coding is much more similar to a language like English. The definition of language is communication, and digital humanists would benefit greatly from learning a popular mode of communication. Looking at previous humanities projects, many of them would look a lot simpler without advanced algorithms and coding.

My prior coding experience helped me with learning HTML, but only to a certain extent. The syntax of HTML was more unfamiliar to me and though I understood it conceptually, I kept tripping up on small typos here and there. The HTML Dog tutorials I did (beginner and intermediate) took a while, but I feel much more confident about using HTML after completing them.

Below is a sample of my webpage. The interactive element couldn’t have been done without some coding involved.

Here I give you the gift of a text box

Note: Type what you want, no one’s looking

Comments:

Your comments

<h3>Here I give you the gift of a text box</h3>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> Type what you want, no one's looking</p>
<form action="somescript.php" method="post">
<p>Comments:</p>
<p><textarea cols="20" name="comments" rows="10">Your comments</textarea></p>
</form>