In late March, my daughter, a fifth grader, walked over to the table where I was working. She smiled at me, dropped off a single leaf of paper and asked, “Will you come to Career Day?” With the look of a hunted animal, I instinctively stammered my usual excuses about being busy at work, and replied, “I’ll have to check my schedule and see.” For the next two days I thought about what was involved with volunteering to participate in this opportunity: public speaking, admittedly not my strong suit. Describing my work — essentially sitting at a computer for hours on end writing code, responding to emails and attending meetings — isn’t necessarily the most exciting material. I didn’t immediately see how the career of “Computer Programmer” would be of interest to children. But when push comes to shove, a father’s love usually overcomes his irrational fears, so I signed the sheet, made the commitment, and wondered what I had gotten myself into.
A few weeks prior to the event, the school counselor emailed to let me know that I was expected to give a 15 minute presentation on what it was to be a Computer Programmer. Fifteen minutes?! That seemed like a lifetime to stand in front of an audience. However, thankfully she also sent home some guidelines and suggestions to ease the process.
About two weeks before I was set to go “on,” I started thinking about the unthinkable and began planning. I wanted to make sure it would be (hopefully) interesting and accessible, so no writing large swaths of web code. I also wanted it to be as interactive as possible, so I was going to make sure I asked the kids questions along the way. I also wanted it to reflect how I work, more than what I do. And since I work in a corporate environment, I went with the gold standard for disseminating information: PowerPoint.
I came up with about ten slides of information, describing who I am and what I do. I included a whole screen devoted to a picture of Spider-man, credited as the original “Web Developer.” This was followed by the “meat” of the presentation, A Day in the Life of a Developer, essentially a scaled down Software Development Life Cycle. It contained “Gathering Customer Requirements,” “Design & Research,” “Writing New Code,” “Documentation & Testing,” and finished with “Fix them Bugs!” I rounded it off with a volunteer typing in their name surrounded by HTML header tags, displaying their webpage on the screen, and then I welcomed that student into the “Brotherhood of Code.” If time allowed, I also had a JQuery webpage ready that swapped images of Calvin & Hobbes comics each time they clicked on the image.
Overall, the day went well. I showed up wearing my “corporate uniform:” khaki pants and a Segue Technologies polo shirt. I then had to present the same topic four times. Fortunately, I had practiced my presentation several times the previous weekend and I had a very good idea of how long my spiel would take, what the important points were, and what I could leave out if I was running long.
The teacher overseeing the classroom interjected several times. He made me blush in the first presentation with his praise of computer programmers as “heroes.” He also mentioned how the language of code will by far outstrip all other written languages in a short time and how this was the children’s future. I admit, I really hadn’t thought of my career in that way. Wasn’t I just a dime-a-dozen web developer?
What struck me immediately following my presentation was how the students answered one of my questions: “Have any of you ever written a computer program?” In a sample of over 200 children, only one raised their hand. I found this flabbergasting. These children, and the rest of their generation, have access to computers and technology like never before. They’ve grown up in a world where they don’t know what it feels like to live without these things. Thinking about it made me wonder: Are children today taking technology for granted?
However, I had to remember that I have a totally different perspective. I still remember record players, pay phones, the phone book and encyclopedias. I remember the first time my father brought home an IBM PC from work when I was in High School. I was entranced by the eerie green glow of the monitor, the various whirrs and beeps as it started up, the delightful ‘tic’ of each keyboard press. I wanted to know how it worked. I wanted to understand its potential and uncover its secrets. It was a huge, honking piece of technology, weighing in at roughly 28 lbs, and it didn’t even come with a hard drive. There weren’t a whole lot of people in my class or neighborhood that I could compare notes with because I suspect we were the only ones with an actual IBM PC and it didn’t jive well with the few Amiga or TRS-80 owners that were nearby.
I think that most children today are used to devices just working for them. They don’t have to think about how these devices work; there’s little mystery or “mystique” anymore. Perhaps that’s a reflection on how far the computer industry has progressed in a short time. The devices have become so ubiquitous, reliable, and user-friendly that there isn’t that sense of mystery associated with a new iPod Touch or a Google Nexus 7: you just pop them out of the box pre-loaded with most of the software you’ll ever need. Anything missing is easily downloaded and usually free, ready to fulfill those few needs that aren’t already met. No one is staring at a blinking “A:” prompt and scrambling through the “Getting Started” documentation after booting up DOS, like I once did. And configuring the AUTOEXEC.BAT file to use expanded memory instead of extended so you can play Wing Commander is no longer a useful skill.
I suppose I didn’t learn how to program until I was a sophomore in high school way back in 1984. I was lucky at the time; our school offered an Intro to Computer Programming class and I cut my teeth writing Basic and Pascal on an Apple IIe. I remember 5¼” floppy disks. But should I have started earlier? Unfortunately, the excuse, “They hadn’t invented affordable personal computers, yet” is valid when you were born before they landed men on the moon.
Three weeks later, a thought that had been nagging me finally coalesced: “Am I being a passive observer in my children’s education? Am I limiting their educational exposure to what the school system provides?” And that was the night I asked my daughters if they’d like to learn how to program.