What to tell schoolchildren about the profession of a software engineer?

Question

Presentations

I had the opportunity and the desire to go to my native school and hold a mini-presentation-lesson dedicated to my specialty for students in grades 10-11. This year I myself graduated from "Computers, Complexes, Systems and Networks", but in general I think to agitate people to simply go to techies-programmers. Among other things, it is required to prepare something like a lecture for 20 minutes, on the most interesting subject in my opinion, with a non-standard / interesting presentation of the material and so on. I'm still just starting to think what to show to schoolchildren, and I'm asking for advice and ideas from the habra community.

Answer 1

Tell them that programming is not a fairy tale job where you just sit at a computer, do nothing and get a lot of money. A lot of people thought and think that this is so.
And also tell them why they will study at the university a lot of strange subjects that seem to them not to be used in real life (some perverted mathematics, electronics, the device of all sorts of incomprehensible things, probability theory, etc., etc.). Take a mega problem in your field and tell them that it can't be solved by just learning one programming language.
Almost none of the students know why they learn everything they are taught, you have a chance to try to correct this problem of our education.
Well, show them something interesting, a simple game assembled on your knee, something from computer vision, some beautiful site, show robots, you can take a bunch of projects from MS Research Lab and show them.

Answer 2

Don't forget to tell the anecdote that a "software engineer" is someone who works like a programmer and gets paid like an engineer.

Answer 3

On the blog of some C++ programmer, I read something like this answer... "The programmer writes cognitive fairy tales for computers and they try to do the same as it is written in the book" :)

Answer 4

Since recently there has been a clearly unhealthy boom of pseudo-programmers and pseudo-startups led by Groupon (yes, I consider it a bubble at a critical stage, because in one IPO it raised more than all of American biotech in 2011, but commensurate with real value added, or at least I wouldn’t see her distant prospect point-blank), it is desirable to somehow show schoolchildren the difference between this web opportunism and real hardware and software innovations. For example, take a phone with some kind of online toy and explain that there are big-eared users who sit in such toys and make money for developers; there are toy developers who make “this cartoonish garbage” and the demand for them jumps depending on the “fashion” of the next platform, and there are those who make these platforms themselves, which then come to thousands of casual game developers and millions of users. That is, the student needs to be made aware that all these thousands and millions are frolicking on the platforms thanks to the few who actually make these platforms, and who do not go through Chainikov's courses, but gnaw on fundamental granite. There is such a wonderful story by Asimov "Profession",

Answer 5

Tell them that the life of a programmer is exciting and full of surprises, despite the fact that they spend 80% (on average) of their time at one workplace. That every day there will be tasks that require again and again to study, learn and put into practice knowledge from many areas, from Banking to Medicine. It is imperative to say that no matter how hard they try to “learn programming”, they will never know everything, so there will always be a direction (or even more than one) for development.
And I also urge you to tell them that the love of sitting at the computer with toys and VKontakte is not yet a sign that they are programmers. While working at the department, I saw a lot of sadness and disappointment in the eyes of sophomores, who were beginning to realize that a computer with toys and VKontakte is far from programming.

Answer 6

I was recently impressed by this video: www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q1xFdQfq5Fk

Answer 7

Go to someone younger and arrange a live coding session or something on an arduino, anything more interesting than a lecture, more chance to interest.
Go to grades 10-11 and instead of a lecture, talk to those who are interested, share experiences individually.
Be sure to say that the first language is taught C.

Answer 8

Watch the presentation of Max Dorofeev - maybe you will be inspired by something:
www.slideshare.net/Cartmendum/cartmendum4-kids