Learning to play like a programmer: web mashups and scripting for beginners

Have you ever wanted to be able to express your
ideas for digital humanities data-based projects more
clearly, or wanted to know more about hack days and
coding but been too afraid to ask?
In this hands-on tutorial led by an experienced web
programmer, attendees will learn how to use online
tools to create visualisations to explore humanities
data sets while learning how computer scripts
interact with data in digital applications.
Attendees will learn the basic principles of
programming by playing with small snippets of code
in a fun and supportive environment. The instructor
will use accessible analogies to help participants
understand and remember technical concepts.
Working in pairs, participants will undertake short
exercises and put into practice the scripting concepts
they are learning about. The tutorial structure
encourages attendees to reflect on their experiences
and consolidate what they have learned from the
exercises with the goal of providing deeper insight
into computational thinking.
The tutorial aims to help humanists without a
technical background understand more about the
creation and delivery of digital humanities data
resources. In doing so, this tutorial is designed to
support greater diversity in the ‘digital’ part of the
digital humanities community.
Target audience: This tutorial is aimed at people
who want to learn enough to get started playing
with simple code to manipulate data, or gain an
insight into how programming works. No technical
knowledge is assumed. Attendees are asked to bring
their own laptops or net books.
1. Tutorial structure
The tutorial will include:
- what a humanities data set is and how to access one
- how web scripting languages work (using
JavaScript as an example)
- how to sketch out your ideas in pseudo-code
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- the value of visualisation tools in understanding
the shape of a data set
- prepared exercises: ‘hello world’, using script
libraries for mash-ups, creating your first mashup using a live cultural dataset (e.g. a timeline or
map),
- how to find further resources and keep learning