5.0004 Humanities Programming Course (1/48)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 7 May 91 23:20:53 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 5, No. 0004. Tuesday, 7 May 1991.

Date: Mon, 06 May 91 12:22:11 CDT (52 lines)
From: "Eric Johnson DSU, Madison, SD 57042" <ERIC@SDNET>
Subject: Programming for the Humanities via BITNET

Following is a description of a three-credit graduate course
in programming for the humanities offered by Dakota State
University via BITNET this summer. If you are interested in
enrolling, please respond with a brief message sent to me as
ERIC@SDNET.BITNET, and I will send you an electronic registration
form.

CHUM 650 COMPUTER PROGRAMMING FOR THE HUMANITIES. An
introduction to programming using SNOBOL4 for applications in
the humanities such as analysis of texts, arranging data from
research, and formatting for printing and desktop publishing.
Prerequisites: a baccalaureate degree in the humanities or a
baccalaureate degree in another field and a minimum of 24
semester hours course work in the humanities, access to and
familiarity with BITNET, and an understanding of MS-DOS commands.
Three semester hours credit. The course will start approximately
June 1, and it will end approximately August 1.

The total cost of the course is $228.45. No textbook is
required. Students will be sent a disk containing a public-
domain SNOBOL4 compiler and a text editor.

Students may audit the course or enroll for credit and receive
a grade of Pass or Fail. The cost to audit the course is the
same as enrolling for credit.

The course will teach academic humanists to write useful
computer programs to produce word frequency listings,
concordances, and indexes. The language of choice for this
course is SNOBOL4 because it is a powerful language designed for
non-numeric computing; humanists can write useful programs in
SNOBOL4 almost from the start. The course will begin with an
introduction to programming, then cover techniques of structuring
SNOBOL4 programs, and it will finish with students completing
individual projects of their own creation.

The programming assignments will be designed for MS-DOS
microcomputers. Although most assignments can be modified for
Macintosh users, the Mac users would have to purchase MaxSPITBOL,
and they would need some understanding of Macintosh file
structure.

Students must have the ability to upload and download programs
from the mainframe that runs BITNET mail to the microcomputer
used for the programming assignments.

-- Eric Johnson
ERIC@SDNET.BITNET