Beginning in the Middle

For the past few summers, I've been taking on talented students to work on digital stuff. Rather than giving them a canned project or expecting anything in particular to happen, I usually give them a difficult problem and then step back. The results have been very encouraging, especially since I tend to choose independent students who are OK with my laissez faire approach.

One of the people who is working with me this summer is Adam Crymble. Last year he managed to come up with a low-tech public history hack, make some 3D animations, and teach himself enough HTML and CSS to hand code a web page. So for a summer project I suggested he try and write some translators for Zotero. He doesn't have any training for this, and I am of limited assistance since I don't really know JavaScript. Sink or swim, buddy!

Adam intuitively started where I would. He printed out all the code and documentation that he could get his hands on, then started using colored highlighters to focus his attention on the parts that he could understand. He also used Wikipedia, the W3 Schools, and our library's Safari subscription to O'Reilly books online. In the space of a couple of weeks, he's made great progress and learned enough so that I'm still of no use to him.

Reading other people's code is always hard, but it is one of the best ways to learn how to program. As Abelson and Sussman write in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, "a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather ... a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." The beginning programmer starts out much like a child who is acquiring a natural language: immersed in a medium produced by people who are already fluent.

Historians have a secret advantage when it comes to learning technical material like programming: we are already used to doing close readings of documents that are confusing, ambiguous, incomplete or inconsistent. We all sit down to our primary sources with the sense that we will understand them, even if we're going to be confused for a while. This approach allows us to eventually produce learned books about subjects far from our own experience or training.

I believe in eating my own dogfood, and wouldn't subject my students to anything I wouldn't take on myself. As my own research and teaching moves more toward desktop fabrication, I've been reading a lot about materials science, structural engineering, machining, CNC and other subjects for which I have absolutely no preparation. It's pretty confusing, of course, but each day it all seems a little more clear. I've also been making a lot of mistakes as I try to make things. As humanists, I don't think we can do better than to follow Terence's adage that nothing human should be alien to us. It is possible to learn anything, if you're willing to begin in the middle.

Tags: digital history | historiography | interdisciplinarity | learning