If you are a web developer parent, will you try to explain to your child your profession before he/she is old enough to understand computer science, e.g. via story-telling?
Or is it better to wait until he/she is old enough to teach them properly?
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Sign up to join this communityIf you are a web developer parent, will you try to explain to your child your profession before he/she is old enough to understand computer science, e.g. via story-telling?
Or is it better to wait until he/she is old enough to teach them properly?
As a web developer I put together a simple "Oregon Trail" style text game that would run on a basic web server and then had my kid play it.
Then as he was doing that I started adding thing (images, other responses, etc) and showed them how it changed as I added more logic and parameters.
It gave them a basic understanding of how development worked and how I could change things by changing the logic (e.g. changing the output of a random number from 50/50 odds to 60/40 odds to 80/20 odds).
I explained as soon as my kids were capable of asking, which for them was around age 5.
The explanation at that age was very simple: "I help put together web sites". I think I used Youtube as an example of a web site. I talked briefly about back end work versus front end work, since I do mostly back end work. The answer seemed to satisfy them.
When my child was 2, I made him a web page that ran only on our local machine. He loved to press buttons. When he ran the program, a big colored rectanglular mosaic would come up. There was a random photograph of him layered under the colored rectangle. Each time he pressed anything on the keyboard, a portion of the photo underlay would be revealed. Once the photograph was complete, he could press a key to play the game again.
Another program I made for him: press a key, and a random photograph of himself appears. Press a key, another photograph appears.
I told him I made the game. That was the two-year-old explanation of web developer.