10 ms·

I have daughters and was not able to get them interested in any computer unless it involves games or social media. But the boys they hang out with are the same

I have daughters and was not able to get them interested in any computer unless it involves games or social media. But the boys they hang out with are the same way- games only, for the most part. While I played a lot of games on my computer as a youth, I also spent a lot of time trying to program games. Today, I'm a developer. Because of kids' fascination with their phones and tablets, and because programming isn't a "normal" thing on computers, I really don't have high hopes for the future of the development community at all, much less for the future of women in this field. But, getting back to the topic of my daughters, my experience has been that: 1. If given the choice, they would not choose the constructive, mechanical toys I grew up with where they might get into robotics or mechanical engineering (e.g. Thames & Kosmos or Mindstorms) although one enjoyed putting a tin can robot together. 2. They also would not choose the electrical kits to put things together and get into electrical engineering, although I did get a kit and my daughters played with them a few times. It just took too much time and attention to have anything happen, and when it did, it wasn't exciting the way it was for me as a kid- it was boring compared to their phones and tablets. 3. As for development, I was able to show one of my daughters how they could play music by programming in emulator of an old computer, but they had little interest. I was able to get that daughter to work with me to use Scratch to program something for about an hour and she really liked it, but she's not asked about it since. Today's environment is just not the same. As much as parents who are developers try to get their kids into development, I just see it as a losing battle. What the world needs is an operating system (or systems) or even an application or set of applications that almost everyone would want to use that require programming in some form or fashion to accomplish everyday tasks better. But, iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, Linux and most applications that people use and games people play- they don't really work like that so much. You can get by without learning to code as a casual user, and the bar is so high now to create anything that a casual user would actually want to use or play. The closest thing to it really is a spreadsheet application or rules in an email application, and most users barely use those.

mattlutze 11y ago
In a similar way that some parents will fruitlessly try to coax their children into being the sports starts they want/wanted to be, for some children the "digging about in the computer" bug just won't catch. I hope it won't be too disappointing for you... there's a whole world of experiences to explore with your daughters! I'm on the older edge or in the early middle of the Millennial generation, depending who defines the generation. As such I grew up and grew into technology just as we were getting really immersive operating system UI/UX. I remember fondly the green screen, text-based, 5.25" floppy games we had in elementary school, as well as the immersive film-like experiences today. Chemistry sets were kinda boring, Couldn't have cared less about my Dad's Erector sets, much to his disappointment. I built a few model cars and a F-14 over a span of 6 months, then those lived in a box never to be heard from again. And even in the computer... hacking around in the depths of my parents' computers was never the fun thing. But getting into web development was super cool, because it was raw, new, etc. Even as I look around, the companies I find exciting are more often web software vice native OS. I'm learning to appreciate embedded systems and very low level machine management, but it still doesn't have that spark like hacking about in GeoCities did... What's the raw, new, interesting tech today? I don't wonder if part of it is figuring out what might be the new version of playing with hobby boards or experimenting in system drivers. Even for me, getting a diode wired up to light up as a kid was super boring. But wiring up an iOS app might be super interesting now. Or, maybe your girls would rather be lawyers or vets or oil rig mechanics. I hear that's part of the fun of parenting :)
- beachstartup 11y ago
  my parents tried hard (real, real hard) to get me to play tennis and piano, and refused to let me spend as much time on the computer as i wanted to. guess which i did at 2 in the morning while they were asleep? guess which i dropped like a bad habit as soon as i left the house? and this was in the 90s, when dot com mania was at its height. newsflash: parents live vicariously through their kids and project all sorts of desires onto them, and it almost never turns out well (i went through a real trouble period that i attribute to their parenting style). seems like a lot of people just forget this once they have children. it must be biological because you can't explain it otherwise - these are smart people that do this. my parents are both highly educated with graduate degrees. (or.. maybe that explains it)
  - Verdex_Alt 11y ago
    I think there are two things at play here. The first is that people are predisposed to love and take care of their children (and there's a bunch of associated brain chemistry that helps with that). And the second is that there exist people who don't understand that not everyone is interested in the thing that they are interested in. [This second one seems to be completely uncorrelated with intelligence ... as far as I can tell. Maybe a personality spectrum thing?] Anyway. If you mix the two together you get people who insist that their children must be exactly like them because otherwise their children would be doomed and that would be unthinkable. More intelligence (and/or forceful personality / competence) may make the problem worse because clearly you know what you're doing (after all you can describe the thing with such great an articulate words) the problem must be this ungrateful child that doesn't know you're paving a golden path.
  - ashark 11y ago
    I have a theory that you'll have a very hard time teaching your kids to be into something if you're not. Kids whose parents play a sport on the weekends or who play music regularly are probably more likely to stick with those things, at least recreationally[1]. Eat your veggies (which probably means you're cooking tasty veggie dishes) and your kids will. Even values, like "learning is important" may work like this. Bet they'll study better if they see you learning new things, watching you struggle and gradually gain understanding and skills. "Reading is super important!" says parent who only reads instruction manuals, Facebook, and (maybe) garbage fiction. "You will practice the piano!" says parent who hasn't played a note on an instrument since high school. "Get your ass out of bed and to tennis practice!" says parent who wheezes going up a flight of stairs. "Math is vital to your future success!" says parent who can count the times they've used anything past 8th grade math as an adult on one hand. Show, don't tell, I guess. [1] Nearly of people I've encountered who were serious amateur or part-time pro musicians came from families that played music, not families that played no music but insisted their kids take piano lessons, for example.
chipsy 11y ago
People are faced with any number of ways to distract themselves electronically now. That makes it hard to enforce the environment of necessity that builds traditional skills. On the other hand, when they do show an interest in something - and you will have to be very patient about figuring out what that is - there is probably an angle to it that involves automation, and thus computing.
crusso 11y ago
I have daughters as well. I tried to get them interested in computers, I really did. I tried to show them how they could make web pages with HTML. I tried to show them some basic Ruby to ask them questions on the command line that they could answer (thinking that if I could emulate a social aspect of computers they might become interested). Nothing I tried worked. I talked one daughter into taking the AP Comp Sci class in high school this year because I assured her that I would be able to coach her through any problems. The summer before the class, I did my best to start going over basic concepts that she would cover in class - just so she could hit the ground running... she adamantly refused to waste her summer on that subject. Meanwhile, a neighbor of mine called me because his son had taken up programming their home computer on his own and wanted some advice on languages and projects to pursue.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  I don't think I would have ever been interested in creating websites in high school unless I had a purpose for creating them. Mine just happened to be that I needed a place to share the stats from the equipment / weapons on the Star Wars MUD my friends all played, so Geocities was my first entry into running websites. From there I made a personal website, then eventually started tinkering around with Wordpress which helped with publishing. All the while picking up little tidbits along the way to help make the sites look better. (And of course it was important to customize your myspace page) Eventually I decided to start officesnapshots.com because it was quite natural to start a website for fun and 8 years later it is my full-time job. All that said, having a reason to create a website was what got me started.
Crito 11y ago
Over the course of the next century programming will become a blue collar profession. Children who develop an interest in programming will become about as common as children who are interested in tablesaws or cutting torches.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  > Over the course of the next century programming will become a blue collar profession more kids than ever have access to computing devices (tablets and smartphones) but very few actually know how to do anything with them at all. I don't see that future you are talking about.
- cm2187 11y ago
  Programming is more akin to engineering than factory working. Languages are getting simpler and more powerful but programs are getting more complex. 15 years ago a typical developper didn't need to worry about multithreading, connectivity or security. It's fundamentally an intellectual job and will remain.
  - Luc 11y ago
    From my Western European point of view, I see a lot of these intellectual jobs being outsourced to Slovenia, Poland and even the Philippines. I am advising my kids to have good technical skills but also great people skills.
    - hvidgaard 11y ago
      Outsourcing has its uses, but the majority of programming jobs cannot be oursourced, and with time it will become even less profitable to do. However, programming any major system today does require extensive knowledge and I dare say a CS degree as well. It's becoming more and more like an engineering discipline, and as such I think we're going to see a shift towards programming being something you need a college degree to perform.
      - 11y ago
Wintamute 11y ago
I think you're right. Back in the 70s/80s/90s kids had to work at using their computers. In order to play a game in the early 80s I had to hook up a tape recorder, fiddle with the volume, tape a 1kb RAM upgrade to the back of the computer and write some code to start playing a game. In the 90s I had to wrestle with AUTOEXEC.BAT and COMMAND.COM for hours to make DOS recognise my sound card. Technical effort and perseverance was rewarded with gaming pleasure. Or rather technical effort and hard thinking were the only way to make that magical screen light up. These days no effort at all is required, games and media on screens is just ambient. It's a very different situation, it'll be interesting to see how it changes the industry ...
- pjmlp 11y ago
  You missed the part of moving the tape reader head to match how the tape was recorded. :) Or using a tiny screwdriver to lift the tape deck when it wasn't possible to move the head.
- skoczymroczny 11y ago
  I think you mean CONFIG.SYS :)
  - lordnacho 11y ago
    Oh man, that reminds me of the 90s. You used to have this situation where certain games required a certain memory configuration (640K / extended memory). So the first thing I did that ever resembled programming was a boot script that would give you a menu of which game you wanted to play. It would say "1) Beneath a Steel Sky 2) Dune 2 " etc. And they it would prompt you to put the right CDROM in.
    - ekianjo 11y ago
      > Oh man, that reminds me of the 90s. You used to have this situation where certain games required a certain memory configuration (640K / extended memory). Origin games often requires that kind of things... but they were the best games of all on MS-DOS PCs! I remember the time when most people wanted to buy a PC because of Wing Commander.
userium 11y ago
Also, after getting girls interested in programming, one of the problems is how to keep them in tech. Currently, over 40% of women leave tech mid-career, which is more than double the quit rate for men (https://keepwomen.com/info/aboutus https://keepwomen.com/info/aboutus).
- leaveyou 11y ago
  The website you linked is deeply discriminatory and offensive to males in tech. "Why do women leave tech?: many women leave tech due to working conditions (low salary, no advancement), work-life balance (too much travelling, commuting) What do women want in the workplace?: flexible working hours, personal development opportunities." What about the males in tech ? They don't deserve better salary and advancements ? They don't deserve work-life balance, flexible hours ? Why don't we help them too ? Everybody wants to help women who leave while they can and no one cares about the males trapped in low paying races to the bottom with no real alternatives. For the low 75% of tech workers it's not help at all that the top 25% earners are all males from Silicon Valley.
  - panglott 11y ago
    Are males in tech really so easily offended?
  - Retra 11y ago
    Nobody cares? You care, and there's a vocal dozen of you in every thread about the subject.
- timje1 11y ago
  Programming is an industry where taking a 3-4 year gap is career suicide, because of the constantly shifting practices and technologies. Some women in tech notice this and move away before raising a family crashes their career. Some don't notice this and are forced to shift careers when re-entering the workforce. Both of these outcomes result in a high attrition rate for women programmers. I have no clear solution for this dilemma.
- Alex3917 11y ago
saint-loup 11y ago
Maybe they're just not into it. Maybe that's perfectly fine for a child no to grokk what his parent likes.
- aaronem 11y ago
  Sure. It's also perfectly fine for a parent to expose his kids to his own interests, in case there might be among them something that will fire the kid's imagination.
jumpwah 11y ago
> What the world needs is an operating system (or systems) or even an application or set of applications that almost everyone would want to use that require programming in some form or fashion to accomplish everyday tasks better. Tangentially related, but this is why I think Emacs is a great... should I say, 'platform'. Maybe not for young children as in the case you talked about with yours, but a quote from one of RMS's talks about Emacs [1] I think shows what I mean: > The editor itself was written entirely in Lisp. Multics Emacs proved to be a great success — programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to program. Maybe it was the syntax of lisp (by which I mean the use parentheses/'S-expressions' vs. using other 'strange code-like' symbols such as curly braces or semicolons) was a part of why they didn't realise they were actually programming? Of course, this will not work today because editing/writing text in anything other than a WYSIWYG word processor interface is too unfamiliar to the average general purpose computer user, and therefore Emacs would too easily 'scare' off most users. But your comment reminded me of this and I thought it would be interesting to mention. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html
- aaronem 11y ago
  I tend to suspect it's partly Lisp syntax but mostly that the entire environment was far enough removed from what people, including the mentioned secretaries, thought of as "programming", that it didn't register with them that that was what they were doing. You can see the same thing today with stuff like VBA macros in Excel. I've seen some amazingly complex business logic implemented that way by people who absolutely did not think of themselves as programmers, and indeed tended to respond with bafflement to the suggestion that what they'd done could be described as programming.
- lsaferite 11y ago
  Having recently started coaching a FLL Robotics Team on programming, I'd say the modern day version of that is something like LabView. Drag and drop programming. I think anyone with half a logical thought in their head could make something that works with LabView or Mindstorms.
DanBC 11y ago
We have Minecraft which had the potential to create legions of people interested in programming, but the reality is that it's an awful awful introduction to programming. Microsoft could, if they port it to a sensible language and structure, drag in millions of young programmers.
- krylon 11y ago
  > Microsoft could, if they port it to a sensible language and structure, drag in millions of young programmers. The first thing I would like them to do is include some form of programming tools with Windows. On a Mac[1], you have Python, Perl, and Ruby available on a default installation, and you get XCode for free from the App Store. A fresh installation of Windows, OTOH, is a barren wasteland in comparison, and the effort it takes to change that is significantly higher. [1] On GNU/Linux, *BSD you have at least Perl installed, and on most Linux distros Python is part of the base system, too.
  - wernercd 11y ago
    Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is considered a top-notch programming environment... and it's free. It would be the perfect place to put something with built in programming hooks into Minecraft. And... there is already too many people putting too much garbage on devices that people don't need... last thing we need is being loaded down with crap - whether Python, perl or Visual Studios - on a default install of Windows. (Why the F* is Candy Crap included with Windows 10 now? Much less Note and other crap that should be opt-in... not clean install > remove, remove, remove... /rant)
    - ekianjo 11y ago
      > Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is considered a top-notch programming environment... and it's free. Free but closed-source. Kids should also learn the value and power of Freedom.
      - chrishynes 11y ago
cheez 11y ago
The problem is you haven't caught up with what computers have become: a utility. They were a novelty when you were growing up, but they are a utility now. What that means is that people who deal with computers are going to be professionals ranging from the spectrum of architect to plumber: there are more plumbers than architects. Do you think your plumber had an innate desire to be a plumber? No. They looked at their options, picked one and executed. That's what the future looks like for computing. So, if your child was always going to be the type to be an architect, they'll be one. Or they'll be a plumber.
- mstade 11y ago
  I use the plumber analogy all the time, but most programmers I know vehemently resist this notion. I find nothing wrong with being a plumber, and think many of my colleagues would do well in realizing they aren't high flying architects but actually just well compensated plumbers.
- lsaferite 11y ago
  Being a plumber is actually a good career. You can't outsource it, you always need them at some point, and the hourly rate is quite high. Maybe you could automate it? At the point tech can automate all aspects of a plumbers job, we'll have automated most jobs (IMHO).
  - cheez 11y ago
    Right, it's not at all a bad career. But even within plumbers you have a spectrum: "fix my toilet" <-> "winterproof this house"
prof_hobart 11y ago
My daughter is 9 and has been fascinated by coding since she was about 6 - initially with Scratch, but she's just moving on to Javascript. I didn't push it on her at all - she asked me one night what I did for a job, so I showed her a bit of code I'd been doing and she was hooked. I've also done an after-school club in Scratch for the kids at her school (9 out of the 10 were girls), and they really enjoyed it as well . Clearly just an anecdote, but the interest is still out there somewhere. And going back to my childhood in the early 80s, there were a group of us who were into coding. But we were very much the nerdy group - it wasn't as if everyone was a budding programmer back then either.
- stuxnet79 11y ago
  This is pretty cool. You should be proud of your daughter. Mine is 10 going to 11 in a couple of weeks and I've tried getting her interested in programming but no dice. She just prefers gaming, social media, selfies. I wish she was into it =( but I will respect the fact that her destiny might lie somewhere else (or maybe she is just a late bloomer).
  - prof_hobart 11y ago
    It's never too late. I didn't start programming until I was about 13 (admittedly, I'd only ever seen one computer - an Apple II - before I bought my Spectrum), but I know a lot of people in IT who didn't start until their late teens or beyond. If you are still keen on getting her interested, have you ever tried something like Scratch? It's very easy to learn and the kids that I've taught it to really seemed to enjoy making silly animations or very simple games with it.
    - stuxnet79 11y ago
      I started my daughter out with Python but she found it too hard, and I think it kinda soured her on programming. I will look into Scratch and see if she will find that a bit more appealing. She recently did a "coding with Minecraft" thing at school, which is very "Scratch"-like, and she enjoyed it a lot.
threatofrain 11y ago
I've had some similar anecdotal experiences in an education franchise, where I've found that it's very difficult to convince boys or girls that math, physics, programming, or computer science is fun or worthy. In fact, I have trouble convincing them that any intellectual pursuit is worthy. Kids tend to enjoy "science" more, but only in terms of what appears to them as fun experiment. When you try to explain anything behind it... it's boring. I'm sure it's similar for the robotics programs popping about. I am also aware that I am just one more adult voice competing for any child's attention, a noise among a chorus of people all with their opinions about what's important. Boys and girls alike question the immediate value of these subjects. They see them as work forced upon them by adults. Like you, I have also noticed that the boys and girls of today, at least in middle class areas, often have touch-screen devices as their first device. Those are just game machines with tons of advertisements. I am sure those companies know that they are advertising to kids. The kids love the ads because viewing it means an in-game reward. But that's an aside. The main point is that these devices aren't an obvious portal to software or technical interest. I have noticed that many schools have a small cadre of children who, by some combination of successful grooming by parents or personal inclination, do enjoy technical subjects and technical mastery. I think at some point, the social reinforcement by that small cadre of children overtakes the importance of parental grooming.
- nightspirit 11y ago
  > I've had some similar anecdotal experiences in an education franchise, where I've found that it's very difficult to convince boys or girls that math, physics, programming, or computer science is fun or worthy. I think kids often operate on simple social heuristics. Guess what it means when somebody tells you ad nausem that something is important to you while his tone, body language and whatnot consistently shows that he cares about you learning this infinitely more than you do? Yes, exactly, this is the smell of bullshit. If science really was that important and if you understood science enough to be worth learning from, obviously you'd be using science to improve their lives all the time and they'd immediately start to monkey you. That's how it works. I think my parents understood this to some degree and didn't try to shove down my throat things I didn't care about, except maybe for religion. Care to guess how far this one went?
roymurdock 11y ago
I'm 22 so I'm kind of caught between you and your daughters, but my understanding is that Minecraft is that new "OS" or "application" that is exceedingly fun while teaching programming in the phone/tablet age. It's phenomenal how popular it is among the younger generations...its coming to replace the legos of my (relative) youth. MSFT is pushing it down the coding/education path as well - they recently launched a Minecraft/Code.org collab - https://code.org/mc https://code.org/mc - which I'm assuming is slightly more fun than programming a spreadsheet or rules in an email app.
- noxToken 11y ago
  I was preemptively horrified before I clicked your Minecraft link. I taught a summer camp for middle/high school kids that wanted to learn how to make Minecraft mods. It was a disaster. We specifically put that the kids must have programming experience in a Java-like language before beginning, but all the affluent parents saw was, "Get your kids out of the house for 9 hours a day for an entire week!" Don't get me wrong: the kids were stoked. They even had some incredible ideas for mods. One kid's idea was that an entire building would generate based on the location of placed bricks, the type of brick, and how high you stacked the bricks. We liked it so much that we built it and gave it to the students to play with. Problem is that only 2 of 30 had any programming experience at all, and Minecraft development (at least back then) was not exactly beginner friendly. I just wasn't possible to teach Java development and Minecraft's library in a week. I guess my point in all this is to say that I'm glad that they're taking the initiative to make programming more kid-friendly with Minecraft. I hope that they can expand the foundation built by Scratch (loops, conditionals, etc.) to allow kids to see their crazy ideas come to fruition.
  - cheez 11y ago
    Was this at the university camps? I sent my daughter to the gaming sessions and she absolutely loved them. I didn't send her to Minecraft for the reasons you stated :)
    - noxToken 11y ago
ryanmarsh 11y ago
I think it's the individual child's (intrinsic and extrinsic) motivations. Case in-point, my eldest daughter (14) is a studious introvert with a strong mastery of Latin and formal logic but loves beauty and wants to be a hairdresser (meh) or Instagram model (barf). Programming and robotics just don't do it for her even though I'm certain she could be good at it. My middle daughter is wicked smart extrovert with zero patience an excess of confidence and absolutely loves robotics, electronics, Goldiblocks, etc... I'd hate to work with her on a software project because she's so agressive but chances are she'll wind up in STEM. So that takes care of intrinisic motivation, as for extrinsic, both thought programming was something only nerdy anti-social boys do. In fact boys and girls chastised my middle daughter for liking so called "boy" things like building a trebuchet or going to the comic book store. If we assume that only a small percentage of children will have both proclivity and potential and that we then also have to play peer-pressure Russian-roulette until they get to college then it's no wonder so few girls are still getting into STEM.
Elesemoran 11y ago
Purple_hazed, I found a company a couple of months ago that is using the raspberry Pi circuit board to teach kids how to build a computer while playing minecraft. A kickstarter success back in April, they are in Alpha and will be receiving their first shipment of Pipers in the coming weeks. Needless to say, I feel in love with the idea, especially as a computer science girl geek. Summation: It reintroduces the physical world back into the physical and makes DIY learning really fun for kids and parents. It was so compelling, I reached out to the CEO Mark (http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to see how I could help them and is why I am making this post today. Mark has an amazing story and reason behind why he created Piper and the team is ingenious. Proof in point, I met with one of the Alpha tester families last week and this is what they had to say: “Engaging, interactive and fun… It's not like most gaming systems,the whole family can learn how things are processing while playing and having fun. I would much rather have my son playing Piper vs all of the other consoles we have in our home, anytime!” Find out more @ playpiper.com, reach out to me if there are further questions too elesemoran@gmail.com
Elesemoran 11y ago
Purple_hazed, I found a company a couple of months ago that is using the raspberry Pi circuit board to teach kids how to build a computer while playing minecraft. A kickstarter success back in April, they are in Alpha and will be receiving their first shipment of Pipers in the coming weeks. Needless to say, I feel in love with the idea, especially as a computer science girl geek. Summation: It reintroduces the physical world back into the virtual and makes DIY learning really fun for kids and parents (even moms raved). It was so compelling, I reached out to the CEO Mark (http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to see how I could help them make a difference. Mark has an amazing story and reason behind why he created Piper and the team is an ingenious group of savvy hackers. Proof in point, I met with one of the Alpha tester families last week and this is what they had to say: “Engaging, interactive and fun… It's not like most gaming systems,the whole family can learn how things are processing while playing and having fun. I would much rather have my son playing Piper vs all of the other consoles we have in our home, anytime!” Thank you for bringing this to our attention and you can find more info @ playpiper.com

mattlutze 11y ago

In a similar way that some parents will fruitlessly try to coax their children into being the sports starts they want/wanted to be, for some children the "digging about in the computer" bug just won't catch. I hope it won't be too disappointing for you... there's a whole world of experiences to explore with your daughters! I'm on the older edge or in the early middle of the Millennial generation, depending who defines the generation. As such I grew up and grew into technology just as we were getting really immersive operating system UI/UX. I remember fondly the green screen, text-based, 5.25" floppy games we had in elementary school, as well as the immersive film-like experiences today. Chemistry sets were kinda boring, Couldn't have cared less about my Dad's Erector sets, much to his disappointment. I built a few model cars and a F-14 over a span of 6 months, then those lived in a box never to be heard from again. And even in the computer... hacking around in the depths of my parents' computers was never the fun thing. But getting into web development was super cool, because it was raw, new, etc. Even as I look around, the companies I find exciting are more often web software vice native OS. I'm learning to appreciate embedded systems and very low level machine management, but it still doesn't have that spark like hacking about in GeoCities did... What's the raw, new, interesting tech today? I don't wonder if part of it is figuring out what might be the new version of playing with hobby boards or experimenting in system drivers. Even for me, getting a diode wired up to light up as a kid was super boring. But wiring up an iOS app might be super interesting now. Or, maybe your girls would rather be lawyers or vets or oil rig mechanics. I hear that's part of the fun of parenting :)

beachstartup 11y ago
my parents tried hard (real, real hard) to get me to play tennis and piano, and refused to let me spend as much time on the computer as i wanted to. guess which i did at 2 in the morning while they were asleep? guess which i dropped like a bad habit as soon as i left the house? and this was in the 90s, when dot com mania was at its height. newsflash: parents live vicariously through their kids and project all sorts of desires onto them, and it almost never turns out well (i went through a real trouble period that i attribute to their parenting style). seems like a lot of people just forget this once they have children. it must be biological because you can't explain it otherwise - these are smart people that do this. my parents are both highly educated with graduate degrees. (or.. maybe that explains it)
- Verdex_Alt 11y ago
  I think there are two things at play here. The first is that people are predisposed to love and take care of their children (and there's a bunch of associated brain chemistry that helps with that). And the second is that there exist people who don't understand that not everyone is interested in the thing that they are interested in. [This second one seems to be completely uncorrelated with intelligence ... as far as I can tell. Maybe a personality spectrum thing?] Anyway. If you mix the two together you get people who insist that their children must be exactly like them because otherwise their children would be doomed and that would be unthinkable. More intelligence (and/or forceful personality / competence) may make the problem worse because clearly you know what you're doing (after all you can describe the thing with such great an articulate words) the problem must be this ungrateful child that doesn't know you're paving a golden path.
- ashark 11y ago
  I have a theory that you'll have a very hard time teaching your kids to be into something if you're not. Kids whose parents play a sport on the weekends or who play music regularly are probably more likely to stick with those things, at least recreationally[1]. Eat your veggies (which probably means you're cooking tasty veggie dishes) and your kids will. Even values, like "learning is important" may work like this. Bet they'll study better if they see you learning new things, watching you struggle and gradually gain understanding and skills. "Reading is super important!" says parent who only reads instruction manuals, Facebook, and (maybe) garbage fiction. "You will practice the piano!" says parent who hasn't played a note on an instrument since high school. "Get your ass out of bed and to tennis practice!" says parent who wheezes going up a flight of stairs. "Math is vital to your future success!" says parent who can count the times they've used anything past 8th grade math as an adult on one hand. Show, don't tell, I guess. [1] Nearly of people I've encountered who were serious amateur or part-time pro musicians came from families that played music, not families that played no music but insisted their kids take piano lessons, for example.

chipsy 11y ago

People are faced with any number of ways to distract themselves electronically now. That makes it hard to enforce the environment of necessity that builds traditional skills. On the other hand, when they do show an interest in something - and you will have to be very patient about figuring out what that is - there is probably an angle to it that involves automation, and thus computing.

crusso 11y ago

I have daughters as well. I tried to get them interested in computers, I really did. I tried to show them how they could make web pages with HTML. I tried to show them some basic Ruby to ask them questions on the command line that they could answer (thinking that if I could emulate a social aspect of computers they might become interested). Nothing I tried worked. I talked one daughter into taking the AP Comp Sci class in high school this year because I assured her that I would be able to coach her through any problems. The summer before the class, I did my best to start going over basic concepts that she would cover in class - just so she could hit the ground running... she adamantly refused to waste her summer on that subject. Meanwhile, a neighbor of mine called me because his son had taken up programming their home computer on his own and wanted some advice on languages and projects to pursue.

stevesearer 11y ago
I don't think I would have ever been interested in creating websites in high school unless I had a purpose for creating them. Mine just happened to be that I needed a place to share the stats from the equipment / weapons on the Star Wars MUD my friends all played, so Geocities was my first entry into running websites. From there I made a personal website, then eventually started tinkering around with Wordpress which helped with publishing. All the while picking up little tidbits along the way to help make the sites look better. (And of course it was important to customize your myspace page) Eventually I decided to start officesnapshots.com because it was quite natural to start a website for fun and 8 years later it is my full-time job. All that said, having a reason to create a website was what got me started.

Crito 11y ago

Over the course of the next century programming will become a blue collar profession. Children who develop an interest in programming will become about as common as children who are interested in tablesaws or cutting torches.

ekianjo 11y ago
> Over the course of the next century programming will become a blue collar profession more kids than ever have access to computing devices (tablets and smartphones) but very few actually know how to do anything with them at all. I don't see that future you are talking about.
cm2187 11y ago
Programming is more akin to engineering than factory working. Languages are getting simpler and more powerful but programs are getting more complex. 15 years ago a typical developper didn't need to worry about multithreading, connectivity or security. It's fundamentally an intellectual job and will remain.
- Luc 11y ago
  From my Western European point of view, I see a lot of these intellectual jobs being outsourced to Slovenia, Poland and even the Philippines. I am advising my kids to have good technical skills but also great people skills.
  - hvidgaard 11y ago
    Outsourcing has its uses, but the majority of programming jobs cannot be oursourced, and with time it will become even less profitable to do. However, programming any major system today does require extensive knowledge and I dare say a CS degree as well. It's becoming more and more like an engineering discipline, and as such I think we're going to see a shift towards programming being something you need a college degree to perform.
    - 11y ago

Wintamute 11y ago

I think you're right. Back in the 70s/80s/90s kids had to work at using their computers. In order to play a game in the early 80s I had to hook up a tape recorder, fiddle with the volume, tape a 1kb RAM upgrade to the back of the computer and write some code to start playing a game. In the 90s I had to wrestle with AUTOEXEC.BAT and COMMAND.COM for hours to make DOS recognise my sound card. Technical effort and perseverance was rewarded with gaming pleasure. Or rather technical effort and hard thinking were the only way to make that magical screen light up. These days no effort at all is required, games and media on screens is just ambient. It's a very different situation, it'll be interesting to see how it changes the industry ...

pjmlp 11y ago
You missed the part of moving the tape reader head to match how the tape was recorded. :) Or using a tiny screwdriver to lift the tape deck when it wasn't possible to move the head.
skoczymroczny 11y ago
I think you mean CONFIG.SYS :)
- lordnacho 11y ago
  Oh man, that reminds me of the 90s. You used to have this situation where certain games required a certain memory configuration (640K / extended memory). So the first thing I did that ever resembled programming was a boot script that would give you a menu of which game you wanted to play. It would say "1) Beneath a Steel Sky 2) Dune 2 " etc. And they it would prompt you to put the right CDROM in.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    > Oh man, that reminds me of the 90s. You used to have this situation where certain games required a certain memory configuration (640K / extended memory). Origin games often requires that kind of things... but they were the best games of all on MS-DOS PCs! I remember the time when most people wanted to buy a PC because of Wing Commander.

userium 11y ago

Also, after getting girls interested in programming, one of the problems is how to keep them in tech. Currently, over 40% of women leave tech mid-career, which is more than double the quit rate for men (https://keepwomen.com/info/aboutus https://keepwomen.com/info/aboutus).

leaveyou 11y ago
The website you linked is deeply discriminatory and offensive to males in tech. "Why do women leave tech?: many women leave tech due to working conditions (low salary, no advancement), work-life balance (too much travelling, commuting) What do women want in the workplace?: flexible working hours, personal development opportunities." What about the males in tech ? They don't deserve better salary and advancements ? They don't deserve work-life balance, flexible hours ? Why don't we help them too ? Everybody wants to help women who leave while they can and no one cares about the males trapped in low paying races to the bottom with no real alternatives. For the low 75% of tech workers it's not help at all that the top 25% earners are all males from Silicon Valley.
- panglott 11y ago
  Are males in tech really so easily offended?
- Retra 11y ago
  Nobody cares? You care, and there's a vocal dozen of you in every thread about the subject.
timje1 11y ago
Programming is an industry where taking a 3-4 year gap is career suicide, because of the constantly shifting practices and technologies. Some women in tech notice this and move away before raising a family crashes their career. Some don't notice this and are forced to shift careers when re-entering the workforce. Both of these outcomes result in a high attrition rate for women programmers. I have no clear solution for this dilemma.
Alex3917 11y ago

saint-loup 11y ago

Maybe they're just not into it. Maybe that's perfectly fine for a child no to grokk what his parent likes.

aaronem 11y ago
Sure. It's also perfectly fine for a parent to expose his kids to his own interests, in case there might be among them something that will fire the kid's imagination.

jumpwah 11y ago

> What the world needs is an operating system (or systems) or even an application or set of applications that almost everyone would want to use that require programming in some form or fashion to accomplish everyday tasks better. Tangentially related, but this is why I think Emacs is a great... should I say, 'platform'. Maybe not for young children as in the case you talked about with yours, but a quote from one of RMS's talks about Emacs [1] I think shows what I mean: > The editor itself was written entirely in Lisp. Multics Emacs proved to be a great success — programming new editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his office started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off. They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned to program. Maybe it was the syntax of lisp (by which I mean the use parentheses/'S-expressions' vs. using other 'strange code-like' symbols such as curly braces or semicolons) was a part of why they didn't realise they were actually programming? Of course, this will not work today because editing/writing text in anything other than a WYSIWYG word processor interface is too unfamiliar to the average general purpose computer user, and therefore Emacs would too easily 'scare' off most users. But your comment reminded me of this and I thought it would be interesting to mention. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html

aaronem 11y ago
I tend to suspect it's partly Lisp syntax but mostly that the entire environment was far enough removed from what people, including the mentioned secretaries, thought of as "programming", that it didn't register with them that that was what they were doing. You can see the same thing today with stuff like VBA macros in Excel. I've seen some amazingly complex business logic implemented that way by people who absolutely did not think of themselves as programmers, and indeed tended to respond with bafflement to the suggestion that what they'd done could be described as programming.
lsaferite 11y ago
Having recently started coaching a FLL Robotics Team on programming, I'd say the modern day version of that is something like LabView. Drag and drop programming. I think anyone with half a logical thought in their head could make something that works with LabView or Mindstorms.

DanBC 11y ago

We have Minecraft which had the potential to create legions of people interested in programming, but the reality is that it's an awful awful introduction to programming. Microsoft could, if they port it to a sensible language and structure, drag in millions of young programmers.

krylon 11y ago
> Microsoft could, if they port it to a sensible language and structure, drag in millions of young programmers. The first thing I would like them to do is include some form of programming tools with Windows. On a Mac[1], you have Python, Perl, and Ruby available on a default installation, and you get XCode for free from the App Store. A fresh installation of Windows, OTOH, is a barren wasteland in comparison, and the effort it takes to change that is significantly higher. [1] On GNU/Linux, *BSD you have at least Perl installed, and on most Linux distros Python is part of the base system, too.
- wernercd 11y ago
  Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is considered a top-notch programming environment... and it's free. It would be the perfect place to put something with built in programming hooks into Minecraft. And... there is already too many people putting too much garbage on devices that people don't need... last thing we need is being loaded down with crap - whether Python, perl or Visual Studios - on a default install of Windows. (Why the F* is Candy Crap included with Windows 10 now? Much less Note and other crap that should be opt-in... not clean install > remove, remove, remove... /rant)
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    > Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is considered a top-notch programming environment... and it's free. Free but closed-source. Kids should also learn the value and power of Freedom.
    - chrishynes 11y ago

cheez 11y ago

The problem is you haven't caught up with what computers have become: a utility. They were a novelty when you were growing up, but they are a utility now. What that means is that people who deal with computers are going to be professionals ranging from the spectrum of architect to plumber: there are more plumbers than architects. Do you think your plumber had an innate desire to be a plumber? No. They looked at their options, picked one and executed. That's what the future looks like for computing. So, if your child was always going to be the type to be an architect, they'll be one. Or they'll be a plumber.

mstade 11y ago
I use the plumber analogy all the time, but most programmers I know vehemently resist this notion. I find nothing wrong with being a plumber, and think many of my colleagues would do well in realizing they aren't high flying architects but actually just well compensated plumbers.
lsaferite 11y ago
Being a plumber is actually a good career. You can't outsource it, you always need them at some point, and the hourly rate is quite high. Maybe you could automate it? At the point tech can automate all aspects of a plumbers job, we'll have automated most jobs (IMHO).
- cheez 11y ago
  Right, it's not at all a bad career. But even within plumbers you have a spectrum: "fix my toilet" <-> "winterproof this house"

prof_hobart 11y ago

My daughter is 9 and has been fascinated by coding since she was about 6 - initially with Scratch, but she's just moving on to Javascript. I didn't push it on her at all - she asked me one night what I did for a job, so I showed her a bit of code I'd been doing and she was hooked. I've also done an after-school club in Scratch for the kids at her school (9 out of the 10 were girls), and they really enjoyed it as well . Clearly just an anecdote, but the interest is still out there somewhere. And going back to my childhood in the early 80s, there were a group of us who were into coding. But we were very much the nerdy group - it wasn't as if everyone was a budding programmer back then either.

stuxnet79 11y ago
This is pretty cool. You should be proud of your daughter. Mine is 10 going to 11 in a couple of weeks and I've tried getting her interested in programming but no dice. She just prefers gaming, social media, selfies. I wish she was into it =( but I will respect the fact that her destiny might lie somewhere else (or maybe she is just a late bloomer).
- prof_hobart 11y ago
  It's never too late. I didn't start programming until I was about 13 (admittedly, I'd only ever seen one computer - an Apple II - before I bought my Spectrum), but I know a lot of people in IT who didn't start until their late teens or beyond. If you are still keen on getting her interested, have you ever tried something like Scratch? It's very easy to learn and the kids that I've taught it to really seemed to enjoy making silly animations or very simple games with it.
  - stuxnet79 11y ago
    I started my daughter out with Python but she found it too hard, and I think it kinda soured her on programming. I will look into Scratch and see if she will find that a bit more appealing. She recently did a "coding with Minecraft" thing at school, which is very "Scratch"-like, and she enjoyed it a lot.

threatofrain 11y ago

I've had some similar anecdotal experiences in an education franchise, where I've found that it's very difficult to convince boys or girls that math, physics, programming, or computer science is fun or worthy. In fact, I have trouble convincing them that any intellectual pursuit is worthy. Kids tend to enjoy "science" more, but only in terms of what appears to them as fun experiment. When you try to explain anything behind it... it's boring. I'm sure it's similar for the robotics programs popping about. I am also aware that I am just one more adult voice competing for any child's attention, a noise among a chorus of people all with their opinions about what's important. Boys and girls alike question the immediate value of these subjects. They see them as work forced upon them by adults. Like you, I have also noticed that the boys and girls of today, at least in middle class areas, often have touch-screen devices as their first device. Those are just game machines with tons of advertisements. I am sure those companies know that they are advertising to kids. The kids love the ads because viewing it means an in-game reward. But that's an aside. The main point is that these devices aren't an obvious portal to software or technical interest. I have noticed that many schools have a small cadre of children who, by some combination of successful grooming by parents or personal inclination, do enjoy technical subjects and technical mastery. I think at some point, the social reinforcement by that small cadre of children overtakes the importance of parental grooming.

nightspirit 11y ago
> I've had some similar anecdotal experiences in an education franchise, where I've found that it's very difficult to convince boys or girls that math, physics, programming, or computer science is fun or worthy. I think kids often operate on simple social heuristics. Guess what it means when somebody tells you ad nausem that something is important to you while his tone, body language and whatnot consistently shows that he cares about you learning this infinitely more than you do? Yes, exactly, this is the smell of bullshit. If science really was that important and if you understood science enough to be worth learning from, obviously you'd be using science to improve their lives all the time and they'd immediately start to monkey you. That's how it works. I think my parents understood this to some degree and didn't try to shove down my throat things I didn't care about, except maybe for religion. Care to guess how far this one went?

roymurdock 11y ago

I'm 22 so I'm kind of caught between you and your daughters, but my understanding is that Minecraft is that new "OS" or "application" that is exceedingly fun while teaching programming in the phone/tablet age. It's phenomenal how popular it is among the younger generations...its coming to replace the legos of my (relative) youth. MSFT is pushing it down the coding/education path as well - they recently launched a Minecraft/Code.org collab - https://code.org/mc https://code.org/mc - which I'm assuming is slightly more fun than programming a spreadsheet or rules in an email app.

noxToken 11y ago
I was preemptively horrified before I clicked your Minecraft link. I taught a summer camp for middle/high school kids that wanted to learn how to make Minecraft mods. It was a disaster. We specifically put that the kids must have programming experience in a Java-like language before beginning, but all the affluent parents saw was, "Get your kids out of the house for 9 hours a day for an entire week!" Don't get me wrong: the kids were stoked. They even had some incredible ideas for mods. One kid's idea was that an entire building would generate based on the location of placed bricks, the type of brick, and how high you stacked the bricks. We liked it so much that we built it and gave it to the students to play with. Problem is that only 2 of 30 had any programming experience at all, and Minecraft development (at least back then) was not exactly beginner friendly. I just wasn't possible to teach Java development and Minecraft's library in a week. I guess my point in all this is to say that I'm glad that they're taking the initiative to make programming more kid-friendly with Minecraft. I hope that they can expand the foundation built by Scratch (loops, conditionals, etc.) to allow kids to see their crazy ideas come to fruition.
- cheez 11y ago
  Was this at the university camps? I sent my daughter to the gaming sessions and she absolutely loved them. I didn't send her to Minecraft for the reasons you stated :)
  - noxToken 11y ago

ryanmarsh 11y ago

I think it's the individual child's (intrinsic and extrinsic) motivations. Case in-point, my eldest daughter (14) is a studious introvert with a strong mastery of Latin and formal logic but loves beauty and wants to be a hairdresser (meh) or Instagram model (barf). Programming and robotics just don't do it for her even though I'm certain she could be good at it. My middle daughter is wicked smart extrovert with zero patience an excess of confidence and absolutely loves robotics, electronics, Goldiblocks, etc... I'd hate to work with her on a software project because she's so agressive but chances are she'll wind up in STEM. So that takes care of intrinisic motivation, as for extrinsic, both thought programming was something only nerdy anti-social boys do. In fact boys and girls chastised my middle daughter for liking so called "boy" things like building a trebuchet or going to the comic book store. If we assume that only a small percentage of children will have both proclivity and potential and that we then also have to play peer-pressure Russian-roulette until they get to college then it's no wonder so few girls are still getting into STEM.

Elesemoran 11y ago

Purple_hazed, I found a company a couple of months ago that is using the raspberry Pi circuit board to teach kids how to build a computer while playing minecraft. A kickstarter success back in April, they are in Alpha and will be receiving their first shipment of Pipers in the coming weeks. Needless to say, I feel in love with the idea, especially as a computer science girl geek. Summation: It reintroduces the physical world back into the physical and makes DIY learning really fun for kids and parents. It was so compelling, I reached out to the CEO Mark (http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to see how I could help them and is why I am making this post today. Mark has an amazing story and reason behind why he created Piper and the team is ingenious. Proof in point, I met with one of the Alpha tester families last week and this is what they had to say: “Engaging, interactive and fun… It's not like most gaming systems,the whole family can learn how things are processing while playing and having fun. I would much rather have my son playing Piper vs all of the other consoles we have in our home, anytime!” Find out more @ playpiper.com, reach out to me if there are further questions too elesemoran@gmail.com

Elesemoran 11y ago

Purple_hazed, I found a company a couple of months ago that is using the raspberry Pi circuit board to teach kids how to build a computer while playing minecraft. A kickstarter success back in April, they are in Alpha and will be receiving their first shipment of Pipers in the coming weeks. Needless to say, I feel in love with the idea, especially as a computer science girl geek. Summation: It reintroduces the physical world back into the virtual and makes DIY learning really fun for kids and parents (even moms raved). It was so compelling, I reached out to the CEO Mark (http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to http://bit.ly/MarkPavlyukovskyy)to see how I could help them make a difference. Mark has an amazing story and reason behind why he created Piper and the team is an ingenious group of savvy hackers. Proof in point, I met with one of the Alpha tester families last week and this is what they had to say: “Engaging, interactive and fun… It's not like most gaming systems,the whole family can learn how things are processing while playing and having fun. I would much rather have my son playing Piper vs all of the other consoles we have in our home, anytime!” Thank you for bringing this to our attention and you can find more info @ playpiper.com