New paper by Potter et al "Everyone Has to Start Somewhere: Democratisation of Digital Documentation and Visualisation in 3D"

[Ben Marwick]

Hi everyone,

Here's a new paper that argues in favor of black box software for archaeologists:

Potter, Rich, Pitman, Derek, Shaw, Lawrence and Horn, Christian. "Everyone Has to Start Somewhere: Democratisation of Digital Documentation and Visualisation in 3D" Open Archaeology, vol. 11, no. 1, 2025, pp. 20250054. https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2025-0054

They are particularly down on scripting languages, implying that they discriminate against people with dyslexia.

I am curious to know your thoughts! 

Warmly,

Ben

[Zack Batist]

Very interesting! As someone who was diagnosed with dysgraphia as a child, being able to type (and backspace!) was a godsend, especially when it came to math and the linear progression of equations that is a common feature of high school algebra (when I was diagnosed) and scripting.

I can’t speak for people with dyslexia (which is similar but different from dysgraphia) but I think it may be prudent to distinguish between the abstract idea of coding and what it means to code in practice, as supported by various tools and systems. For instance, I can’t imagine how I would operate without an IDE that matches brackets, autocompleting variable names, advanced search and replace, and many other little things we take for granted every day. Learning how to properly name my variables and comment my code also goes a long way to organizing my thoughts and implementing an emerging plan of action. So in a sense, I think it would be fair to say that setting up a workspace is hard and does take a lot of time, and no one really teaches it. Same goes for fundamental principles of how computers work — what are files and buffers? how are directories abstracted by the file system? These are things that I learned through very specific experiences and through direct and ongoing experience in the terminal.

Although it’s unfortunate that this is not typically taught in university classrooms, I think there is a lot of benefit to learning (and struggling) on your own and among peers (though maybe Sophie and Sebastian can shed more light on this, based on their recent analysis of teaching digital archaeology). If you look at the code from my MA thesis 10 years ago it is absolutely abysmal, and what I write now is only marginally better. This is because I don’t code every day. Just like with some black box tools, I code so infrequently that I usually have to re-learn basic functions each time I begin a new project. But the fundamentals are there, and I know how to search for documentation, so I eventually settle in and retain more and more each session. I have comfort in my ability to learn and adapt. Having a solid and non-judgemental peer-group that supports and reinforces not only the practice of coding, but _good_ coding practices, is crucial.

All this being said, collapsing the distinction between developer and user ensures that you are now accountable for the code, and that there is no one to point to and blame. As the old adage goes, with great power comes great responsibility. And that can be scary. Which reinforces my point about the importance of peer support.

One last thing: the authors seem to gloss over a very important point: that coding gives you fine-grained control over a computing environment. I do believe that you don’t always need to have fine-grained control to do good work, and we all depend on some package or library to do the heavy lifting rather than re-write the wheel each time. But having the option of taking control enables you to do a lot more than what developers packaged for you. This is why I have such admiration for QGIS, which is all python and GDAL under the good, just masked by familiar button interfaces, and you can easily switch between TUI and GUI interactions with the data.

I’m really sorry for the long response, and I’m looking forward to what others have to say. Either way, definitely something worth addressing in our next session next week!

Zack

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Zack Batist, PhD

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