That was the line that stuck out to me the first time I read our class syllabus. “We’ll write code. Absolutely zero previous coding knowledge or experience is necessary.” For a few minutes, I thought I had made a huge mistake signing up for this course. I’m a creative writing student; my thing is words, not computers and code. “Literature and Literary Study in the Digital Age” sounded to me like just exploring the impact of digital archives and modern technology (like social media) on the literary world. I was only anticipating analyzing these sources, not downloading unfamiliar coding software and learning the different commands and file extensions. The first week of class was beyond intimidating and I debating dropping the course several times, but I’m honestly happy to still be here!
I’ve definitely become more comfortable playing around with basic code. During the first few weeks of class, I kept meticulous notes on every single command brought up in lectures and referred back to them every time I inputted anything into my command line. I was terrified of hitting the wrong key and somehow deleting half the files on my computer. Now it almost feels like second nature to jump right into GitBash every class and start setting up and navigating my journal files. It feels a little silly to be so proud of myself for only knowing a few commands or file extensions by memory, but considering I came into this class with zero coding knowledge, I’m allowing myself to celebrate tiny steps.
It’s also a pleasant surprise to see how quickly I’ve gotten comfortable working with HTML. I was working with WordPress and HTML last semester as part of an English project and I was very nervous because this was so far out of my comfort zone. I recall copy-pasting every use of the paragraph and body elements each time I needed to use them instead of actually typing them out because I didn’t trust myself to input them correctly, even if I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. Had I done that project now with the HTML knowledge I have from this class, I would have felt more confident in physically typing the elements out and likely less inclined to rely on copy-paste.
This class has given me significantly more respect for those who understand and work with computer code on a daily basis. I always knew that code was intricate and demanded immense attention to detail, but seeing firsthand just how much truly goes into making sure a code runs as intended leaves me with even more appreciation for those who work with it all the time. I’ve also realized that I like working with code more than I anticipated. While it’s a little frustrating at times to figure out what’s incorrect about my command inputs, it’s exciting when my code works the way it should, especially when experimenting with HTML.