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Ask HN: What do you tell kids when they ask "Where are IT skills used?"

by prennert on 11/8/24, 12:07 PM with 14 comments

I am volunteering for CoderDojo and some other youth projects and I got this question lately from children and their parents. Due to the nature of these events, I tend to speak to kids who enjoy programming already or a "good with computers". But even though they enjoy solving programming puzzles, they do not grasp the economic significance of software nor the career that it opens up.

This might be partially due to the confusion around "IT". To teachers here, and therefore students, it means "anything computer related". Their parents often think of IT as administrators of off-the-shelf soft- and hardware in enterprises. Using software engineering to solve interesting and/or valuable problems by building or extending software is something that is somehow outside their awareness. Especially because I tend to interact with a demographic in the UK that is quite removed from the silicon valley phenomenon.

So I struggle to give a concise answer because the real answer is: "Everywhere", "Software is eating the world" etc. But those answers are not satisfying because they dont really mean anything to the kids, nor their parents.

An option would be to try to give them a list of all the things I have built in the past, or all the software that they are interacting with, from websites to OSs and research projects etc. But that would be a long list and is either oddly specific or overly vague.

I worry, if it is too specific, kids might not identify with it and think CS / IT (whatever you call it) is boring. If it is too vague it does not really answer the question either.

So my question is, how would you answer this question if you had 1 minute, 5 minutes or 10 minutes? Apart from hackernews, are there good resources for the uninitiated (parents and kids) to get an intro into what software is used for in the real world that they can catch up with at home?

  • by JohnFen on 11/8/24, 1:03 PM

    > the real answer is: "Everywhere", "Software is eating the world" etc. But those answers are not satisfying because they dont really mean anything to the kids, nor their parents.

    I dislike that answer because it's not really an answer, it's a handwave.

    Perhaps the way to start is to refine the question. As you point out, "IT skills" is vague enough to be unhelpful in terms of understanding what the kids really want to know. But it would be a great starting point for a discussion that could lead to refining the question to be closer to what the kids actually want to know.

  • by LinuxBender on 11/8/24, 2:53 PM

    I start by asking what games they play, then together we look at ways to manipulate the game using code snippets, manipulating delay lag on the network to game the networking code using tc on their router if it is running Linux under the hood. Most importantly I make sure they understand the concepts they are manipulating so they can extend the capabilities to other games. It has to be something fun to keep their interest otherwise they will just move on to other things. I also show them some simple techniques to defend their router and PC against simple flood attacks most commonly needed in GTA4 and indie games such as blocking off inbound ports that the game opens on the router but are not really needed and dropping packets based on size, rate and combination of specific ports. They have to learn how to profile traffic and spot anomalies in wireshark correlated with the time their game or PC crashes. Nothing too advanced, just a starting point. If it's too advanced they will be overwhelmed and lose interest.

    For clarification when I say kids I mean teens. The younger kids will learn from the older kids in Discord. The teens will taunt each other to get them to attack their machine. That too becomes a learning exercise that they will perceive as a game. Red team vs Blue, Yellow and Orange teams [1] Oh and yes I of course tell them which techniques break which laws and what will get them hired. There is some overlap.

    [1] - https://hackernoon.com/introducing-the-infosec-colour-wheel-...

  • by blackbear_ on 11/8/24, 1:05 PM

    Numerical simulations and optimisation of mathematical models are there workhorse of many scientific and engineering disciplines. I would bring up examples with very nice visuals like computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, and the like.

  • by solardev on 11/8/24, 6:47 PM

    Aren't there apps that they like? "IT" people make TikTok, Instagram, Roblox, Discord, WhatApp, Fortnite, every iPhone app, every website... if they name any particular app that they enjoy, you can kinda go over how it's made (briefly).

    As for career opportunities, eh, IMO, no need to oversell it, right? We're just a field like any other, and I think the glory days of the 90s and 2000s are way past us. Nowadays it's mostly a few gigantic companies doing the innovation and everyone is mostly just a tiny cog in a big, uncaring machine... it often IS boring, repetitive work. Sure, software gave us cat videos and social media and AI text. That's cool, I guess, but then there's the terrible reality of the exploitative gaming industry, the leetcode grind, the Scrumfail meetings, the endless Javascript framework treadmill... most of it is isn't anything awe-inspiring, just normal, boring work.

    Unless you're at the top of the field doing R&D, software isn't some super special thing every kid MUST go into. If they show an interest in it, sure, why not, but if not... there's so much else they can do instead that's better for them and for the world. Paint an honest picture for them so they can decide for themselves if it's right, rather than being lured into something that ultimately disappoints and burns them out.

  • by de-ma on 11/8/24, 2:49 PM

    I didn't understand why I was learning matrices, dot notation, linear algebra & calc in high school. The sigma notation for summation is like a for loop in code.