In my opinion, you shouldn’t try and take a position of mentor in the field if you don’t have the experience/authority to do so. You’ll just misguide her.

There are things i can think of that you may try:

1. Try and do something techy yourself. Getting your own hands dirty will give you much better insights into what she’s getting into. Something that’s useful to you. I don’t know what you’re into, but if you have a hobby, it’s usually easy to find an idea for a tool that will help with that hobby. Just make sure you don’t try and take her place or something.

2. Probably better: Ask HER, if she could make something useful to you, or even better for your whole family / community. You may go for something a little more complicated, cause she’ll have more time to devote to this. IoT projects are very rewarding and touch a lot of aspect of tech. Home automation projects are great, like connected lightbulbs that respond to voice or if you have emails. Small games like wordle are cool too. Or things like community websites. When I was 18 (22 years ago!), I built a message board for me and my friends. It was really fun and then i could customize it for things we liked to do, like rating movies, and plan holidays. We used it for years, and only stopped when the ISP stopped supported the backend tech I was using.

In any case, the sooner she starts the better off she’ll be. The first thing is to pick up anything: a book or a tutorial online, and give it a shot.

Good luck, and have fun!!

Oh and tech-wise: the language doesn’t matter, the future of AI doesn’t matter.

Most important is to find something she likes to do.

Tech is only a tool to enable things to happen. When you do woodworking, it’s because you like nice furniture, not nice chisels.

> When you do woodworking, it’s because you like nice furniture, not nice chisels.

Some people just like chiseling.

And luckily other people like the furniture they produce with that skill. (if they just chisel down blocks of wood to dust, they will be in a tough spot though)

I love to chisel.

I do not think this can be emphasized enough. Encourage her to pay attention to the things/ideas/puzzling/problem solving processes that bring her joy. Technologies change, but figuring out what engages you will make it much easier to make good decisions about what to explore next. Encourage her to find things she likes to do, and to think a bit about why she likes to do them.

Some woodworkers like their product, others like the process. Recognizing the things that resonate with you is key.

Agreed. I found that solving the tedium and annoyances of people's jobs is what gives me joy in my programming work.

I honestly had not thought to ask her to make something for me, but it's a fantastic idea.

Just for what it's worth, a personal project of mine was how I got my first tech job.

Just being someone who has actually built anything at all immediately puts you in the top 50% of grads.

If she's interested in electronics, feel free to shoot us an email (link in bio) and I can set you up with a free USB Oscilloscope (debugging hardware for analog circuits).

Point her at AdaFruit.com, buy her a gift card

In particular have her browse https://learn.adafruit.com/ to look for stuff that interests her

Yes!, it is a really good idea. If she is still just "inclined" and not "off-to-the-races" yet and you have a good relationship (which sounds like you do) this could be so much fun.

Honestly, if she’s ready to graduate High school and enter college, she’s old enough to be researching those questions on her own (not that you can’t too). She should be, too. Learning how to learn in your industry is an actual skill to learn. Learning what the “pulse” of the industry is will also be valuable for her during studies and beyond, and she’ll also meet peers who can have those discussions with her.

That said, I think for many this forum is actually the place to learn about the industry. It’s too broad an industry to find more specifics without knowing her interests. Does she like startups? Does she care more about the business side? Financial tech? AI? App development? Does she not know?

This site is honestly a great mixed aggregator of other sites. Find interesting ones and see the other posts. She’s in HS so the bar is low on deep technical knowledge and expectations. She should probably focus less on intense research topics unless she has an actual interest in a more academic side (simply because academic research is less approachable to someone without much academic experience).

If she doesn’t have an answer to those questions, I would say she just start googling things that pique curiosity. “How does X work” is how I started. That’s how I learned which buzzwords and jargon mattered to me. Probably more approachable for a younger person earlier on the journey.

Here are some newsletters I follow. My interests skew towards business.

Bits About Money: https://bam.kalzumeus.com/

Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/

She may also appreciate other women in tech, since it can be hard for women. Rachel is pretty popular: https://rachelbythebay.com/

If we are talking about women in tech I wanna throw in a recommendation for Julia Evans https://jvns.ca/. She's awesome.

Makes ME want to be a programmer, and I’m a 71-year-old [VERY]ex-physicist!

>She’s in HS so the bar is low on deep technical knowledge and expectations.

I generally agree with your post but I would argue that the content on this site is likely (though not always) to be too advanced to hold the interest of an average HS graduate. But to the right person it's practically an institution.

I guess I'm just cautioning that resources recommendations would probably work best when tailored appropriately for knowledge and skill levels.

Don't be a mentor, be an enabler instead.

My mom inspired all of my early learning about computing, officially starting at age 9 when she brought me to Barnes & Noble to get the RedHat Linux book because our internet was too slow to download the full OS. Her only contingency was that I actually read the book and pay for it with my own money. She taught me the value of a dollar and how to stick with something, even if it's hard. She chewed my teachers out when they'd say I was "wasting time" on computers, she bit back when I got into video gaming that invited disingenuous allusions from teachers about Columbine, and she listened when I'd babble on about what I did or learned.

My mom isn't good with computers at all, but my #1 champion when it came to chasing my dreams.

I agree 100%, based on my own experience both as having been a kid and being a parent.

Like a lot of other folks have already posted, I was also the weird sort of kid that spent time "playing on the computer" and talking about what I'd learned and asking about "modems" and "BBSs" or "the Internet". My parents would listen, supported getting an extra phone line to run my own BBS, would drive me places to support my hardware and books habits--and that all was important to continuing to explore this niche.

As a parent, well, I have an interesting mirror experience. My oldest daughter got really into basketball. This is absolutely inexplicable to me, because neither I nor my wife ever played, nor did we ever watch a basketball game at home before her interest developed. (Schools these days, exposing children to strange new ideas!) I knew the basics (orange sphere through orange ring = points; double dribbling and traveling are bad; no tackling) but really had no interest. But we've enabled her interest: let her join the school team, signed her up for summer camps or 3-on-3 leagues, encouraged her to practice in the driveway (oh, yeah, bought a hoop for the driveway), have watched or taken her to college women's games.

She still knows more about the game than I do. Even with years of watching, "volunteering" for scorebook duty at some of her home games, talking with coaches and refs, there are still a lot of subtleties of the game that escape me. But it's okay. She plays, she enjoys it, and she knows her parents support her strange, strange interest.

Even if you don't really, completely "get it" as a parent, supporting and enabling ("enabler" is such a good word here) is worth a lot.

This! Enable them to get in contact with their dreams.

Offer to drive the kids somewhere to like minded people, maker spaces and such, museums or exhibitions. Lookout for possible events like lectures, presentations, meetups, evening schools, summer courses. Help to find good deals on some used equipment and materials (whatever that might be) and try to provide some space to work on. Help to create financial support for tools and materials, even if it is just arranging for mowing the neighbour's lawn so that they can earn the required money.

I love your reply. This is what my parents did as well. They put ne in contact with people that knew about computers and bought me a lot of books about them. My dad would listen to me talking about the new things I've discovered, even though it was all way above his expertise.

Reach out to our advisors at bestparents.com who can actually help you with this exact topic.

We have tons of short courses from great providers. My favorite is one which pairs teenagers like your daughter 1:1 with a postdoc at Cambridge University on a two week project e.g. creating an AI for categorizing blog posts. At the end of the two weeks your daughter gets a reference from that same postdoc on their enthusiasm, aptitude and preparedness for that technical subject. You find that if you and your daughter go through 2 or 3 such programs together the process of selecting among them and the references you get from academics give you a ton of context that genuinely prepares you both for the bewildering world of technical professional and academic careers.

Last year I remember in particular we helped one kid navigate the maze of "Computer Science vs Videogame Design vs Computer Art vs Chemical Engineering" this exact way. It was great to see his parents learn all about the nuances of the videogame business and careers in CS despite having a Chemical Engineering background.

Do consider reaching out and also checking out our social media where we talk about situations exactly like yours all the time.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder - my wife is the founder of that marketplace.

The courses look brilliant, definitely a strong advantage to gain a reference from a Cambridge postdoc. I'd take part if the £2.5k for online or £5k for residential was much lower, but it's understandable why the fees are so high.

What a wonderful idea. Thank you.

It's touching listening to a parent who wants to have a better discourse with their daughter.

Some caveats about HN. The conversation here can be a little too focused on money, success and being an entrepreneur. My daughter is a similar age. This generation is smitten with comparison. I read mega success stories here in the same light as the chance of someone becoming a pro athlete i.e. very unlikely.

In saying this, tech can be a wonderful field to work. I was a tech hobbyist who got to spend the last 25 years working in technology. I'm now a lecturer teaching non-tech grads hoping to get jobs in tech companies. My advice to young people is to make a plan. The plan probably won't work out as you expect. Work hard and be kind.

I think you'll get an extremely general and possibly skewed sense of things reading the comments here. What field do you work in? I would find a professional peer who is experienced and can serve as a trusted mentor, this is really more of a 1-1 type conversation. Think like the CTO of your company, or something along those lines. Even a friend of a friend would be good.

My personal 2c is at that age super high level advice on "how to learn" is going to be more useful than "what programming language is best". A lot can change in 4 years and it's better to set your daughter up to succeed at building a solid base of knowledge that will be adaptable to whatever trend is popular 4 years, or even a decade out, rather than take even an extremely well informed person's guess as gospel.

^^best answer in this thread. Use your network to find good trusted mentor(s): ideally someone closer to your age (quite senior) and someone closer to her age (recent college grad, a few years into their career).

your role can be more about supporting her curiosity and ensuring she doesn't over-index on any one piece of advice.

ps: glad you're asking this question. i shoe-horned myself into a finance role bc that's what my dad did and i lacked awareness to wonder what i wanted to do

It's really cool that you're reaching out here to be in the best position to advise your daughter. Based on how you phrased it, I would suggest trying to connect your daughter with people in the industry to answer some of these questions. At this point, you're unlikely to be in a position to evaluate these things better than she can, as someone who's presumably going to be studying technology. And when she actually gets into the field, she's really going to encounter things that non-professionals will have a tough time understanding.

I don't know all of the professional orgs for women, but as a Black person, I am a member of several orgs, like /dev/color, which create safe spaces for us as underrepresented people to ask candid questions and pool experience.

That said, I hope you find it interesting to engage with the tech world, which may help you continue to relate to her as she gets into the career. My parents start dozing when I tell them what's up in my professional life, haha. Even my wife, who is tech-adjacent, has limited patience for engineering talk.

The best thing you can do for her is help her find her own motivation. Tech is a remarkably open field, and you can learn basically everything you need on your own---if you're motivated. It doesn't really matter where you start or what technologies you learn, since nearly everything has applicability to everything else, so the second technology is much easier to learn than the first (and the third is easier than the second, and so on). Once you get started you can iterate until you find the niche which is the most interesting/comfortable for you.

On the other hand, I've had friends and family who simply never started. They didn't have that spark, so they didn't take the first step. Or they did and it was hard and they didn't come back. They didn't have the motivation to get over that first hump to see what was on the other side. It didn't matter how many suggestions I made, or how much advice I gave them, it just wasn't enough to compensate for a lack of desire to go further.

For me, that motivating factor was Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham, a sort of eclectic book that covers topics as far and wide as why nerds are unpopular in school to some of the fundamental aspects of programming languages. I don't honestly know if this is an approach that would work for anyone else, but I mention it because it's the sort of thing that might spark an interest that would be self-sustaining (or at least it was for me).

Welcome! I'm a dad of 3. My oldest, a girl, not technically inclined, is going to college in the fall. My other two, one girl, one boy, are technical, and for them I think about these issues a lot.

FWIW, my strong advice for a parent, new to the industry, of a woman, is: do NOT get try to get caught up in the tech side of things, but instead attend to the human and culture side.

There are great things about tech and so many more women doing well these days but the awful truth is also that the tech industry can be uniquely terrible- there aren't enough adjectives- for women. For men, too, of course but the industry continues to be dominated by misogynists.

I follow (terrible term) hundreds of brave tech women on twitter...and hearing (virtually) their voices and stories has been the most important education of my life.

Learn that side. And be there for your daughter to guide and support and provide human perspective when she encounters the dregs that this industry harbors.

Best wishes.

Agreed. Preparation to deal with discrimination and bias is essential. Finding mentors who have faced these situations before, and can provide relevant career guidance, should be priority #1.

Oh, the sweet, true, pure, unadulterated irony of this getting downvoted.

I can't make the claim about why you're getting downvoted, but personally, whenever I see a bold claim that one thing in particular out of hundreds is "uniquely terrible", and there's no reasoning provided for why and how this is actually the case, it definitely makes me pause.

I have thoughts about this and I’m not sure how to phrase them, so I’ll hope you forgive if I’m inelegant.

The tech industry can be strange for women. I’ve often been the only woman in a meeting, for example. And as an interviewer at one company it was disheartening to see how few women applied for dev jobs. (That wasn’t a problem at my previous job, which was a startup with an education focus and attracted many female dev candidates.)

Some women find being in that minority hard, I think. I’ve never particularly minded, though I still notice it sometimes. E.g. I was in a meeting where someone made a very mildly risqué joke about a sunbathing neighbour and was obviously embarrassed when he looked at me and thought through the fact a woman was in the room. But it was mildly risqué, quite funny, gentle humour and not bothersome at all.

I have been careful when looking for jobs to emphasise that culture is important to me. I don’t want to work places where people play silly, back stabbing games. The closest I’ve come to a bad experience was working with a recruiter, who I liked a lot, who told me about a company and then hesitated. I prodded gently because he’d been excited about this company and thought I’d find the work interesting, but seemed reluctant to send me. After a while, he told me that he didn’t want to send me because the last two women he’d sent had a bad time and he didn’t want that to happen again. It was horrible to realise there was a local company treating female devs so badly, but it was also kind of the recruiter to have that awkward conversation with me. And, frankly, I’m happy to avoid the unpleasant bits of the industry.

Overall, I find I have a lot in common with the men I work with and have rarely felt like I was treated differently because of being a woman. But I have also made an effort to work in smaller companies and prioritised things like a collaborative company culture. There are icky companies in the industry still and I’m glad that I haven’t ended up in one of them.

I do think there’s value in thinking through (and discussing) strategies to use when facing discrimination or harassment. That’s something young women struggle with, because having your bum grabbed in public is just so bizarre. It’s hard to know what to do. But I would be sad if those discussions left young women feeling worried and reluctant to do things. I feel much the same about cautioning girls about the tech industry — we can spend too much time talking about the companies that are awful, when there are many welcoming companies that are wonderful places to work.

Apologies for the wall of text. As the thread is about young women going into tech, it seemed worth presenting a different experience and perspective. Hopefully it will prove useful (or even encouraging) to someone.

Best of luck to your children and to the OP’s daughter.

Thank you and thank you very much for sharing. I personally find it invaluable to hear narratives- good, bad, indifferent- from women and wish more of the storytelling in tech land was in a woman's voice/from that perspective.

When the girls were little and I would get to spend time reading to them, when we were reading stories with a male protangonist I always changed the pronouns to female. It made it a different story (at least for me!).

We are all human, but we are all uniquely human, and more stories from different voices and perspectives will create more opportunities and resonance for all.

In terms of the specifics- agree completely that creating a psychic boogeyman serves no one's interest. My likely not-achieved goal was just to point the mom to areas where it seemed a mom's perspective could be usefully informed. Especially being able to coach with concrete examples around exactly the scenario you describe- interesting work but difficult/problematic culture. How to navigate?

In any event, cheers and thank you again.

You’re welcome. I think it’s wonderful that parents like you are thinking about the challenges their kids might face and having these conversations. I do worry about the “psychic bogeyman” (great phrase), but I also figure having these conversations is better than letting kids find out the hard way.

Maybe this isn't the advice you were looking for, but why don't you just ask her to explain the issues that she's facing when she deals with them? You're never going to be more informed than her about the technical issues, your strength is as moral support for her to make her own decisions.

I used to recruit fresh graduates for a fairy high-end consultancy.

What mattered:

- personal projects. Those can be anything from a game to a database engine, in any language too. They show personal investment in the field, not just money-driven career choice.

- enthusiasm for (new) tech. A "C expert" that will only do C (and often very specific stuff in C) is in a very narrower niche than someone who just wants to learn stuff and have fun. There is some justifiable verticality (front end, back end, database, network, surely AI nowadays), but limiting oneself by language, framework,... just means you'll be obsolete in 4 yrs.

- interpersonal skills. Programming is, as any job, at least 30% communication. If colleagues, bosses, clients like you you'll be a much more valuable team member. This does include NOT being a people-pleaser, and NOT hiding failures/issues.

Anyone who had of 3 of these stayed with us. Tech knowledge can always be acquired... actually, always has to be acquired, so doesn't matter that much once you've proven you can indeed imbibe it.

I've got to echo: "Don't be a mentor, be an enabler instead." from another comment. You don't know what you don't know, so trying to figure out the direction for the future may be just confusing for both. I've been doing tech for ~2 decades and my son won't get guidance from me in any specific direction - but I'll show him as many different things as I can, because I have no idea what will be both fun and relevant in 20 years.

Really, it doesn't matter what the best choice today is that much - everything helps with everything else. Just starting something today matters. My best tech experience from highschool years was doing something noone around me knew about or even could recommend even though I grew up with techy father - but it happened by finding the right community online and just trying. On the other hand I got some well meaning guidance from my mom that just wasn't realistic. I don't mean that to discourage you from getting informed - just saying that you can do so much more to help in other ways: providing resources, finding ways to look for answers, looking for local groups, saying "you want to do X - great, try it, show me what's cool about it!".

Also watch out with reading too much HN or other sources. Each one of us is really biased in what we do and some groups are massively underrepresented here. For example the 9-5 consultants who are just as much a part of the industry.

Edit: Also keep in mind there's lots of tech/other crossover areas where you can learn tech+something at the same time. For example https://rosalind.info/ for bioinformatics, https://www.cryptopals.com/ for cryptography, automatic stock trading challenges that I can't recall the name of right now, etc.

Edit 2: "I feel like I am letting her down when she wants to discuss specifics, i.e. What do I think about the future of AI, which programming languages will remain relevant etc." - You're not! If she's serious about this direction, she'll leave you far behind in what she knows - and that's great! You can still help her help herself. You found places to improve your own knowledge, so you know how to keep learning :-) Also you don't need to know the answers for a good conversation - good questions will do: What does she think of the ai? Why? What's currently missing? Is anyone talking/blogging about solving it? What will it change? Who will benefit? What's the next challenge?

This is wonderful to read. When I graduate high school in 2002 my parents saw the news talking about outsourcing and warned me against tech! Good thing I never listen :)

Encourage her to find mentors that can provide that technical guidance. Luckily tech is one of the places where "follow your interests" works.

> which programming languages will remain relevant

This is the last thing you need to worry about.

Learning French won't be very helpful if you later need to learn Korean, but programming languages are not like that. It's easy to switch programming languages.

The key is learning how to write code in any general-purpose useful programming language.

Python is generally considered a good language that is used in industry and also happens to be beginner-friendly, so start there.

“ Learning French won't be very helpful if you later need to learn Korean, but programming languages are not like that. It's easy to switch programming languages.”

However, learning a second human language makes it easier to learn a third (or fourth, or fifth…), the earlier the better. Completely anecdotal, but my Hungarian-Romanian colleagues all picked up German and/or English extremely quickly and completely. Growing up speaking two completely different languages must have something to do with it.

> Python is generally considered a good language that is used in industry and also happens to be beginner-friendly, so start there.

Ditto for both Ruby and Javascript. A big part of each of these being "easy to learn" is the setup time of the toolchain; for all of them (and particularly Ruby and Python) the interactive consoles are fantastic learning environments... and come pre-installed on Mac, so you have zero time trying to figure out how to get started :)

Play is the most effective way to learn (outside of classes; although I'd argue good play teaches more than classes).

Gonna show my colors here: Ruby has an advantage in "playing to learn" through SonicPi. It's hands-down the shortest distance between "learned something" and "have something to show for it", which makes it a fantastic way to play.

That said - AFAICT the driving, and differentiating factor, between success and failure in "learning to code" is having something you want to do with it. If that's ML/data processing, go with Python. If that's interactivity in a browser, that's JS. If that's a full-on website, it's Ruby.

That _also_ said - I would also strongly recommend that once she's reached comfort with one language, to pretty much immediately start learning another. Each language teaches different things, and learning what each to teach makes you a drastically better programmer overall. And, the number one blocker I've seen to seniority as a programmer is willingness to learn and work in other languages. The earlier you can "break the seal" on that, the better.

That was my generic "sample question," not necessarily hers. As she discusses what interests her she will say things along the lines of, "depending on what (factor X) is relevant." I would like to simple be able to respond to her as she talks, unlike now where I feel like I can only say, "What do you think will be?"

It's very much like communicating in a foreign language with only a basic phrase book. I'd like to at least be able to speak pidgin.

The "tech industry" could be practically anything.

I hope I am not being too presumptuous but I read this question as evidence of a mom that doesn't want to let her daughter go. She is going to have her own life and interests. She will make friends who are experts in whatever niche she chooses and will not be let down just because you can't suddenly be an expert in her field.

I think it's great you are reading HN and talking to her etc. But my suggestion is to NOT try so hard to be her peer, because that is likely to push her away.

My suggestion is that if you want a solid relationship with your daughter then maybe take some pressure off of it by making more friends.

Perhaps my wording was not as eloquent as it could have been. I'm not attempting to be her friend. I'm attempting to help my kid navigate her decisions for post high school education and I'm woefully uneducated in that which she is trying to determine. If she were interested in medical school, which is my field, then having a conversation with her about trending specialities, the future of surgical robotics etc. would not be considered pressuring her. It would be the same thing millions of parents across the country are doing to ready their children for college. However it isn't medical school, and I don't think I should be faulted for trying to at least be able to understand the terminology of some of her thoughts and concerns?

No, I don't think you should be faulted for trying to understand terminology. And I think its great you are reading HN and interested in staying up on technology in general and talking her through decisions.

But let me break this down a bit more concretely. The question you actually asked is pretty much impossible to answer. As I said, there are numerous subfields in technology. For you to "better educate yourself in her chosen field" you would need to actually know what she was studying. Her field could turn out to be databases, or AI, or geographic information systems, or one of literally hundreds of different technology-related careers. So for you to really be able to advise her in these areas.. I think the only way to do that would be something like this:

* (assuming she goes for CS) wait 2 years for her to finish her general education requirements and start digging into the computer science

* find out exactly what classes she is taking

* get the textbooks for those classes

Now, how do you think she would feel if she found out you had bought the exact textbook she used for her class?

Suppose that you _were_ an expert in all matter of technology. The main point would be the same. She needs to make her own decisions about what field to go into. And she doesn't need her parent to make suggestions or tell her what is trending.

But overall I am not trying to fault you. I am trying to help you. I believe your are looking to maintain a relationship with your daughter. Or at the very least, help her make decisions. You cannot help her if you are not able to maintain boundaries and are creeping her out. As I said, that will push her away, and make it more difficult for you to give her advice. I believe that you are already overstepping your boundaries.

If she is graduating next year, then the time to start making decisions for herself has long past. If she is not good a making decisions or researching, focus on those general skills. But for you to be so involved into her decisions or so keen to be an expert in her field (which again, has not yet been chosen) is interfering with her development and as I said, _will_ push her away.

EDIT: thinking about this more, I actually think your question would make sense if she was like 7-9 years old and you had some years to help dig into software development or whatever with her. But if we are talking about late teens, there is no way you are going to be able to help her the way you think in a short time, and as I said, she is past the point in her development where that approach is appropriate.

just as another point of view from someone who was recently close to your daughter's age I generally agree with ilaksh, but I don't think this is what you are doing (or that you are taking it far[1]). It is very frustrating when one build a new thing, learn something exiting, or be really hyped about a new development in the field and not be able to share that with their parents. or them not really "getting" it and being disproportionately proud.

Hilariously, I usually had the opposite problem where I'd slap something together haphazardly by following an internet tutorial (with 0 actually understanding of what is going on) and my dad would be visibly proud and happy with the cool demo even when I tell him that I just downloaded X and copy-pasted Y and Z.

[1] unless you really want to answer the "what is the best language?" question as most of us view (Learn these top 5 X_technologies in 2022) articles as superficial bs. I see from your other comments that this might not be what you really meant. Which is fine. It is just funny seeing people triggered by it lool (I guess I also kinda was). I just wanted to elaborate that we have our own hypes, trends, and tabloid-like articles that answer questions akin to "You need to know about these top 5 hospitals in NY" or "Surgeons who use x-surgical-tool are paid the highest"

Just a quick 2cents worth:

I get the vibe your daughter is not set to inherit who-cares-if-I-work money.

Given that, in my opinion (I have a 20-yr old "kid" in college), the overriding challenge with undergraduate education in the US is a lack of connection between what you study (especially the specifics of your major) and what opportunities exist in the real world for gainful employment that earns a living but is also able to give one some life satisfaction at the same time.

Unfortunately, I believe this is not a matter of simple oversight. The truth is, it's not in academia's interest (as they see it) to, in their minds, be pushed towards a more vocational emphasis, as you see in m any other countries, where higher education is more entwined with vocational choices at an earlier age.

I love the idealistic ideal of a generally useful "Liberal Arts" education, but I wish it was not seen as somehow in conflict with some hard-nosed, real world advice about how the market for one's skills is judged, what the percentage chances are to snare a plum opportunity in field X and so on.

Right now, my son is entertaining a music major because it will be "more fun". Having spent a good portion of my life in that arena, it is difficult for me to explain that success in the music business is probably not dependent on what you majored in at college, whereas for less glamorous careers, what you studied could make all the difference.

Then there is graduate studies - another subject for another time.

Best of luck!

Isnt it said that George Lucas is the onky succesful director who graduated from film school.

I think my experience might align with your daughters side of this. Both my parents are dentists and my older brother is now in dental school, so dentistry and health care were the talk and expertise of my household growing up. I ended up switching from a Biology major to Computer Science major my first year at University, so I went from a track where my parents could provide guidance based on their own professional experiences and experience of their peers to something that was completely outside their domain of knowledge. After I switched, I quickly had more knowledge about computers and "tech" then they ever would, so I could not turn to them for detailed professional advice and guidance.

Although they can not provide detailed and expert level guidance, I still turn to them for career and life advice. I try to explain anything I am working on at a level that they can understand, but even then, I have to weigh their guidance against the fact they do not share the same context as me or someone in the field. It came a bit faster than both they and I expected, but I think all of us have realized we reached a point where they can't provide all the guidance I need and that it is on me to find mentors and decide the path that is best for me.

Three good books that try to introduce computer science to non-specialists from various angles:

* The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work by Danny Hillis

* D is for Digital: What a Well-Informed Person Should Know About Computers and Communications by Brian W. Kernighan (I think his Understanding the Digital World is probably a retitled newer edition of this book?)

* Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

All three of these authors have had interesting and prominent careers in computing. None of these books are exactly on-point in terms of directly addressing careers, but all of them should help you understand more of the substance of what your daughter is working on and the context for other discussions you encounter.

I'll recommend to find her a mentor. Some friends or acquaintance that knows about computers and tech who could guide her.

Back when I was in secondary school (1995) I loved computers and programming, but my parents had no clue about them whatsoever. However they had a friend who was a lecturer at local university. They asked him to visit and talk with me about computers. He gave me a book on the C programming language, he gifted me some CDs with a 'novel' operating system (freeBSD) and he gave told me to learn about pointers data structures and algorithms. Of course he was also very available to answer my questions.

I thought It was the best thing ever at that time.

A lot will depend on her aptitude and inclination. It sounds like you’re thinking that software is a likely direction. If she’s looking at college, a computer science degree will give her a lot of options. There are also two year and technical schools with similar curricula.

If she goes that route, there are many different types of work. Writing software is the obvious one, but there’s technical project management, engineering management, etc. Again, depends on where her interest lies.

One great thing about being a woman in tech is that it offers great job security and growth potential. For whatever reason there is a real dearth of women in the field, so if she’s good, she’ll be highly sought after.

> What do I think about the future of AI, which programming languages will remain relevant etc.

I've been in the industry for some 30 years now - and I have become very careful, even reluctant making specific predictions like these, especially over long stretches of time. I would recommend to read a bit, sure, but stay away from opinion pieces ("AI is racist" or "Why Cariboo is the language of the future") and rather nourish a solution-oriented way of thinking ("Which problems can we solve with technology?")

Programming languages change all the time - and yet, they don't really. We're still mostly working in C-like languages, and that one's been around for half a century. Practical applications of math haven't changed in centuries. What changes are societal requirements that technology may be able to solve.

Get your daughter to have interests outside of technology. Talk politics with her. Interest her in the arts, and in business trends. The larger the palette she has, the easier she will find an interesting problem to solve.

And - I want to stress this is regardless of which gender your child has - prepare for your child to choose a different path halfway through. Support them if they choose to do so. In the end, what matters is if you spent your life in a worthwhile way, which does not necessarily mean 'in a good job'.

I don’t see SQL, Python, R etc, data science, and data engineering in general going anywhere in a hurry. Businesses are generating more and more data each day.

When I was at University the database courses (and the lecturers themselves) were very abstract and so excruciating boring that I leaned almost nothing. Courses in languages like C and machine code were much more fun.

But, decades later I find myself doing SQL every day, and despite having a compsci degree I’m effectively self-taught in all the languages I actually use.

Stay away from the gaming industry, from everything I've read, it's a hellhole, especially to women.

The medical industry has been good to me in the past, there are plenty of women in powerful positions in the medical industry, in my experience. Also, medical is typically more resilient to recessions / general downturns. Finally, at the very least, you are making it more efficient for patients to get care. That's a lot more inspirational to me than selling ads and spying on people.

Really take the first job she can get and stick it out for a year or two. That first job is the hardest, afterwards, it's a lot easier to land a job.

As far as language, that's really just luck. The best way to hedge is to go to monster or dice and query each language in the area you think you will be living in. It seems like different areas have different predominant programming languages (oddly enough). It's usually C# or Java for backend, but there are some frontend frameworks too. When I was in college, I tried to learn as broadly as I could. That included how networks worked, how databases worked, how to write applications and how project management / development life cycle worked. All that has helped me.

Always respect your craft and keep mastering it.

For me what helped a lot was finally gaining friends (at 21) with similar interests (and by then I finally had my own computer to mess with). Before that I was messing with our family dos/windows computers but in university a friend gave me a Mandrake Linux CD and that finally made things click for me, soon after I got Apache working and proudly showed my father my self hosted website… and then I emailed the adres (10.0.0.21 or so) to all my friends and quickly learned another thing or 2 about networking (10.0.x.x addresses are local and sharing them over the internet makes no sense :)). Before that I was all on my own, of course this was when the internet was just coming up, no YouTube etc. IMHO there is no real substitute for a group of like minded individuals to Learn from and to get motivated by. That, and it helped that my father didn’t get angry when I bricked our modem telnetting into it (some 25 years ago) to let my friends see that website as well.

I think nowadays Raspberry Pi’s are just great, so much power and freedom for 35 eur. I was always afraid to mess with our home computer (back in the day we had 1 for the family with a family email address), but Raspbery Pi’s, man I’d keep throwing them at my kids if they were interested.

I would encourage your daughter to cast a wide net. Being technical does not always mean being an engineer or a scientist (computer or otherwise), and being an engineer/scientist doesn't always mean being technical.

Some of today's most interesting and exciting "technical" challenges have their roots in many disciplines. Cybersecurity can be tackled from a full range of perspectives, from the highly technical (e.g. cryptography) to traditionally non-technical disciplines like law, public policy, and design. The kind of deep thought our world needs on things like AI and ML needs people who are just as informed about the social sciences, psychology, philosophy, and economics as they are about computer science. Our ongoing debates about issues like content moderation or digital privacy need folks who understand how to think about people, including those who are at risk and vulnerable, and then translate that knowledge into the language of engineers.

And even though we've made progress on this front, our governments, courts, and legislatures are still running on a deficit of knowledge about tech, which is a whole different ballgame. (I'd encourage reading Bruce Schneier's site on public interest technology if you're interested: https://public-interest-tech.com/)

All this is to say: if your daughter wants to go the hardcore tech route and loves solving CS or software engineering challenges, more power to her! But I also hope that she doesn't feel limited or boxed in by the traditional definitions of the discipline.

A recommendation in parallel with the links you'll hopefully get on material, try to make a connection with a quality mentoring / support organization for your daughter.

An amazing coworker at a previous job worked with this group, but there should be similar ones around the world: https://mywit.org/about-women-in-technology/

Someone actively working in the industry can provide a valuable perspective and advice, and start building a professional network.

Alternately, there are various ACM and IEEE organizations, although I've heard both vary in quality and usefulness from chapter to chapter (or SIG to SIG). Maybe an IEEE or ACM subscription or membership, if financially feasible? Spectrum and Communications (the main monthly magazines of the organizations, respectively) tend to be a nice mix between survey and detail, so could provide talking points and research focus for a month.

I think having no immediate tech knowledge makes you the perfect sounding board. She will already end up finding tech forums that will give her all of the opinions, except that of a mature mother with an outsider perspective.

If she asks you a question, ask her about the subject in order to find a parallel in your own life. Her having to explain it to you will probably shape her understanding of it better than if somebody just told her what to think.

There are way too many tech blogs out there with innumerable subjects and opinions. I couldn't even begin to tell you what they all are... You'd have to pick one specialty and start swimming through a deluge of information, blogs, podcasts, books. Also I'd say there are very few "right answers" in this overgrown industry, sort of like asking how you should build a house. What kind of house do you want?

Graduate HS, correct? US-based? What’s her plan for UG studies?

Yes, in the US. She plans, as it stands now, to complete basics for the first year at a local university before declaring anything other than a generic major.

What rough geographic area of the US are you in? Would she be interested in interning at some point in the next year? Maybe even over this summer?

East Coast Adjacent. And I'm positive she would next year.

> East Coast Adjacent. And I'm positive she would next year.

If she is attending University, tell her to get involved on the campus life since things are opening back up, Hackathons are a great way to see if what/if anything takes your interest and how the collaboration process with a team actually works.

There is an idealized version of it, something I think we call tech-porn that acts as a brochure for every CompSci program with an intern and basic photoshop skills will show as what awaits a student, one that makes you think that things are all done form chic looking co-working space with baristas and fruit-smoothie machines everywhere. This is a very poor representation of what actually awaits anyone that is actually building anything that matters (read: not FAANG).

The reality is much more gritty and crude, if it's a 24 hour Hackathon like most I've attended are they're filled with red-eyed nerds and empty pizza boxes and half-filled Red Bull cans everywhere and a rather 'ripe' BO smell in the air that makes it clear that this is a grueling albeit innovative and creative space that you're either into, or you are not. There is no in between, and if you're paying for a University degree you better be into otherwise it will be a large waste of time and money, and bootcamps may be a better option if you just want to 'dip your toes.'

The prizes are not really the point of hackthons, although somewhat nice since they can lead to paid internships, what is the point is the exhilaration that gets you hooked into making something that moves you and that you can bring into the World with like-minded colleagues.

Email me (it’s in my profile) if you want help in the internship department.

Chat rooms for social programming initiatives like EleutherAI or GoCoder Bomberland are great. You get exposed to new ideas, people discuss state of the art AI papers, and you can team up with others for the next project / next round, thereby finding yourself a mentor.

>What do I think about the future of AI, which programming languages will remain relevant etc.

As famously demonstrated by the Dropbox example, this community is not any more able to answer these questions than any random google search.

Have her join the Society of Women Engineers. https://swe.org

I teach college-age girls, and they universally report that it is very hard for them being women in this field. They report to me that they find solidarity among other women, and SWE is one place that helps build exactly that support. Also consider attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: https://ghc.anitab.org. We have a scholarship to send students there every year and they enjoy it.

I love that you want to be knowledgeable in her interests. You won't be able to keep up with her however, let alone provide advice. But you don't have to.

Ask her. Let her teach you. Be in awe of her growing skill and knowledge, her intellect and passion, how fast she goes. She might love to teach you the things she learns, and this is the best way actually to learn new things. You don't have to know or do anything, just be curious and let her tell you what the future of AI is or whatever, sit back and enjoy your free education.

For what it's worth: I didn't figure out the specific area of tech that I wanted to focus on until two years after I graduated college :)

I wouldn't worry too much about such specific questions right now. I'd focus on encouraging her to keep exploring her interests, maybe looking for schools that have good programs for the broader subject area. But she has plenty of time to learn the nuances of the job market and how she wants to fit into that. They could very well change in the next four years anyway.

Best of luck to you both!

I agree with other recommendations on finding a mentor who’s familiar with tech. From your description it sounds like your daughter is interested in software. You can check https://www.womenwhocode.com/events for local network events that she can attend to meet and speak with others of all experience levels.

Why not have her read HN? Then she can ask her own questions and discover the specific things that's she thinks are interesting.

It can still be good for you to learn more so that you have a shared interest or at least conversation topic. I'm just saying that trying to learn it from scratch to the level of being a mentor will probably result in not-so-great advice.

Is she academically ready for a tech field? Visit some universities where she might end up and talk to faculty and TAs there.

If she need to get more up-to-speed, a community college may be the way to go before heading to university.

Also investigate co-op and intern programs available through the university. These provide valuable breaks from academics where you can use what you have learned.

It’s definitely all about her interests. At entry level she’s probably got plenty of things to learn that will be useful for many different paths and help with coursework. Ie calculus, linear algebra, python (suggestion), Linux, or some robotics kit.

The Women in Data Science conferences, https://www.widsconference.org/, have a lot of really engaging talks.

at her age, better to pick up a practical language like python or php and get her first 10000 hours just coding stuff for the web. a lot of it is failry low hanging fruit and there's plenty of work so she can get paid to do it. Only after mastering a mainstream language would I recommend going down the rabbithole of esoteric langauges.

Although I agree with most of the answers here, I'm gonna go against the grain a little bit and recommend a book. Not a programming book. But one that is written with the explicit intent to give an "Understanding of the Digital World. it explains how computer hardware, software, and networks work. Topics include how computers are built and how they compute; what programming is; how the Internet and web operate; and how all of these affect security, privacy, property, and other important social, political, and economic issues."

I'd suggest the second edition that was published in 2021 as it apparently adds a few sections about more recent "buzzwords/booming-industries".

Disclaimer: I have not read it my self, but I have heard that it is well written and the author Brian Kernighan is a small-celebrity in our world. I have watched a few youtube explained by him on technical topics which was very good.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32889467-understanding-t...

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-World-Computers...

Edit: heh wow actually after reading the table of content, I think I actually convinced myself to buy it for a close relative myself.

Help her to be a master of technology with her own vision, not a "tech worker" who pushes buttons for another's ideals. Steer her toward humanistic and ethical technology, not the industrial domestication of humankind for the enrichment of the few. To that end, help her find a healthy education in tech critique but tempered by counter-critique best expressed in Sara M. Watson's "Tech Criticism and Its Discontents".

if I understand correctly, your daughter will graduate high school, or similar, and start college/university, and you want to be able to provide advice?

to be honest, if you're not already an engineer, or a mathematician, or in general have some sort of expertise that allows you to "mentor" her, then don't even try

unless what you want is simply to be able to hold a conversation and not get completely lost, in which case, learn some of the history of computing, or read some of the "how X works", where X is something specific, like computer sound, or computers, or the internet, etc. you don't need to become an expert to be able to understand the fundamentals, and hold a conversation

for the mentoring, it'd probably be more effective to seek someone else who can take the that role (I'm assuming it'd be something like in engineering)

and it'd probably be better to mentor her in "life stuff", by that I mean things everyone needs, for example, learning how to cook (everyone needs to eat), learning to manage time, learning to balance relationships, hobbies, work, "self care" — like maintaining an exercise routine, arranging dentist/doctor appointments, saving money, and figuring out what to do in life, some people focus so much on grades and getting a degree that they end up feeling lost after graduating

more on the mentoring, I'm not sure I need or would want to speak to my parents about what I study or work on, much less want either of them mentoring me, knowing that the only "got into it" in what might be interpreted as "they wanting to feel superior" (not saying that's what you want), instead of they simply taking an interest if or when I speak with them about what I do

it might have been nice, but I think understanding that different people have different things they like/want, different problems, and simply taking an interest is a better approach, than trying to be in every aspect of someone's life, that's just my thoughts though, you should ask her what she wants you to do

in general advising to create things and tinker is good, by "things" it could be hardware/software or a by-product, or using hardware/software to create other things, for example, if you're into music, you could make a circuit to transmit music, or to amplify some sound in the music

another good way is internships, I'm not sure if there are limits on how many internships one can get/do, I've only done one, but it can be very useful as an indicator of how working in the industry is

also, AI is a meme, and C is never going to die

Do not follow trends is the first recommendation: AI trend for instance is mode thin air then something else, some aspects are not, but most is. Similar is the js/web boom. In general if she want real tech she have to go where only few goes, not where the mass rush. So finding some advise from the FLOSS world is good, but finding from someone in person is far preferable, I do not know in you country, in UE it's moderately easy find some at university or around them that you (student) know as someone who know enough to be a good mentor.

In programming language terms... Trendy language that will probably last for a bit of time are Python, as an universal glue not really alone but surely anyone encounter it a bit in the present and for the next 10+ years, Go and Rust likely remain a bit present and being trendy might be nice to have a bit on their CV (a bit means I know what they are, I can use them, I know a bit their ecosystem). Lisp is really niche these days but will remain as it is or grow for the next 20+ years very likely. However do not consider them as "something to learn individually", programming is like reading books, a language is a kind of books, like fiction vs history, you can't study "one kind" much more than you study to read books in general. Again my advise is not do address her somewhere, just tel her to look around balancing her desire to what she can found around. There is nothing useful in studying something you do not like just because it's trendy, get a crappy job quickly and than pass with the same patter from a delusion to another.

Honestly my suggestion is caring MUCH, much more, the human part of the university and working world, meaning how to deal with humans in "contracting" terms, dynamics of college and working world, ... the sense of the passage from a "young protecting world" to an open one. That's normally ignored and they count MUCH more than the chosen tech field, because learning is the target, knowing something in advance might help initially but not much more than that, how to move in the new world, how to make choices, that's change the game. These days anything is "focused" to a point veeeery few are able to see a kind of big picture and often that picture is incomplete/distorted, learning how to look and think in general from the start is lifesaving. Specialization is a way to be a successful worker, have a generic knowledge of anything is being a successful human being able to move in her own society in a changing world instead of being at the mercy of events, responding each time to whatever happens a time after another without knowing where you are going, so where to go in the medium and long run.

Oh, BTW an unpopular (on HN/in the anglophone world) thing: if you can it might be far better and cheaper study in Europe (France (Nice/SA, Montpellier, Toulouse)/North Italy (Turin, Bologna not much Milan) than in the USA, UK or CA, coming back for a master is a thing, enter France/Italy unis with a USA/UK background is surely hard (lack of too much culture due to how English school systems are designed) but doable, and with the knowledge/forma mentis formed here a master in the USA is a snap of fingers, have a value all around the world and the total cost is probably far lower in the long term. I have globe-trotted a bit and honestly I do not feel in almost any country values in well reputed unis, MIT included, the rep help at first but in tech terms fall short due to a waaaaay too specialized knowledge. So a master to focus after having formed a solid culture is a thing, the rest is more advertisement than substance...

It's wonderful that you want to help your daughter through what is frequently a stressful and uncertain transition. I'm now working in machine learning, but I spent a lot of time working with students at exactly that level in the UK. I remember working with a student going into physics (first year undergrad), whose dad was trying to learn a bit of the lingo for fairly similar reasons. His son was responding badly to him - there was a lot of frustration and resentment on both sides - and he asked me for some help on being able to talk about quantum mechanics with his son, similar to the question in your OP.

What I said to him was: if you want to be able to talk to your son about quantum mechanics, you're going to have to learn to solve Schrodinger's equation in a one-dimensional potential well.

He kept on pressing about how he wanted to open up conversations about all the industrial applications of nanotubes, about quantum tunneling, quantum communications and cryptography, all kinds of things, but I kept giving the same answer - if you want your son to take what you have to say on QM seriously, learn to do the math. What he didn't do was to put in the 3+ years of studying wave mechanics and differential equations that I had implicitly recommended and continued to recommend. Eventually he got the message, accepted that his son shouldn't be listening to his opinions on the implications of QM on the wider world, and things calmed down between them.

The point I'm trying to make is that it is easy to think that you can run ahead of your daughter to be useful as a guide to her, as you probably always have done. Or that if you stay informed on the things that interest her, she'll want to have long conversations about them with you. But as she grows up, there will come a point where she's a specialist in her area and you just won't be able to keep up, and the only conversations that will work are ones where you're asking her to explain to you something you fundamentally do not understand. And there's no shame in that - I absolutely cannot keep up with the learning rate of people half my age and it's exceedingly rare to find someone who can. Your daughter is about the age where this change in dynamic should start to happen.

If you're going to talk with your daughter about technology, from now on, you must acknowledge that she is the master and you the apprentice. She'll be teaching you, which might be useful to her, but you're not going to be able to guide her on matters relating to tech any more than I could guide her on a career in medicine. Which is not nothing, but bear in mind your usefulness here is going to bracketed between the equivalent of "I hear NHS staff are pretty overworked these days" and "I know a great guy who's been a consultant for decades, do you want to meet him?" The latter, by the way is a seriously useful thing you could do, but requires acknowledging that she'll need actual guidance from an actual expert way sooner than it seems, and probably much sooner than you'll be able to speak pidgin-tech.

This isn't meant to put you off. Do read Paul Graham's excellent essays (http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) - they're very accessible (apart from the programming textbooks!) and can give you real context as to the human elements of the decisions she'll be making. But, having seen this story play out before, I want to help you avoid the pitfalls. Remember, she'll meet many technical peers and mentors over her career, but she'll only ever have one mother.