Prelude

Before taking this class, I had never really heard of or ever used Python although I have a couple of friends that are computer science students. My only encounter with Python had been watching my friends frustrated over their assignments because they could not figure out what was wrong in their code.

On the first day of doing the lessons on Python programming, I started to get a hang of things in terms of how the software worked. Coding made sense when I typed it up because I was forcing myself to actually read and understand the code rather than just copy and pasting it.

The most fascinating part of the process was hitting run and seeing whatever I had typed “come to life” either through Python or through the other softwares such as TextEdit and opening webpages.

The most frustrating part was definitely the errors. I finally understood and felt the frustration that my friends had been going through.

The process

The first error that I ran into left me confused on both days:

I later discovered that I was getting this error because I was using the wrong version of Python (2.7 instead of 3.5). I am still not exactly sure what the error meant but it did go away after I switched to the other version.

After this point, things were going really well. I was able to figure out text mining (to some extent) and seeing the results from running the codes was quite fun.

At the end of class on day two, I ran into a different error that no matter what I tried, did not go away, so I eventually gave up as class ended.

Thoughts

I think learning Python can open up a world of opportunities for anyone. Mostly everything to do with the Internet, and any programming would require knowledge about Python. In the world of digital history, I think any project could benefit from coding, whether that be text mining or something else. My knowledge of Python itself is limited so I can’t exactly say what it can be used for.

In terms of Python’s relevance for my project or my personal research/work, I do not see myself using Python much just due to its complexity. I am in my final year of university or else I would have totally taken an introductory computer science course (one of my many regrets), but I believe, with my current knowledge, there just is not much that I can do with it.

I am going to have to reiterate a thought that has already been expressed in class. I believe learning about these softwares and programs allows us to at least talk about them or talk about the possibilities in an educated manner with those of more expertise and I believe this class has given me sufficient information and experience to do that.

At the very least, I can look at some codes and understand 25% (hopefully) of what is written and I am happy with this outcome from just two days of learning.