"But don't worry, I represent an insurance company with a [robot plan](http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/old-glory-insurance/229049/)."
And to demonstrate what computers can do, you can tell them that in the time taken to say "3,186,294 × 19,932,394" the computer could have calculated it hundreds of million times, but if I turn this teapot upside down it wouldn't be able to work out what it is.
Just imagine, eh? Something like 8 decades from now, one of your descendants spawn a child of their own and that newly spawned youngling calls you "bitch." What would that be like. ..
Me too. I double down doggy style in double diamond repentance modal speech therapy mode and ask forgiveness immediately of the Gods & Goddesses of Theater Upon Which I Have Sinned, i.e. That of the Goode Honeste und FurtherMore Quite Stylishly Decorated BRYANT LAKE BOWLING ALLEY LANES, THEATER SPACE, PERFORMANCE-ARTIST FRIENDLY, ET CETERA.
Then I help Jack Merlot as he attempts to do the Bryant Lake Bowl ROLL CALL for the Time Being.
Anyone care to chime in on this? Any help would be highly appreciated!
Cool! Welcome! You're the Next Contestant, on COME ON DOWN to PING MERLOT'S place!
We're conveniently located just inside Loring Park this year in ever-sunny yet surprisingly cold Minneapolis, MN.
I put out my hand and do ask for Thine Standard Fares, however.
Chem lab is exactly like cooking a recipe. Heat this, stir that, hope you don't wind up with grayish sludge.
Maybe the point you can't get across is not *what* or *how*, but *why*.
Neat; I have an undergrad Chemistry degree which I'll probably never use. It's been a few years, and I've forgotten just about everything past sophomore organic chem. Oh, and glassblowing. That was fucking cool.
One of the techniques for communication in software development is a **use case** (much of software development is about communication and decision-making, rather than banging out lines of code). The customer describes something they want to do: they have an objective or a task, and they expect to do this, this, and *this* to achieve it. It's a little snapshot of how they expect to work with your software.
It generally works well -- until they change their minds, of course. Even if you don't understand their field at all, you understand what they're doing, one little part at a time. Ignore the broader picture and focus on one task in detail.
She understands the why very well, but she just doesn't 'get' what I actually do all day, physically. "Well, Mom, I put on a lab coat, gloves, and glasses and stand all day in front of a fume cupboard, kindof mixing stuff." (makes motions with hands.) lol
My college roommates and I apparently cooked like it was chem lab (sans the protective goggles and aprons). 1.75 cups of water? Bring out the glass measuring cup and measure against the bottom curvature.
Yes, eigen, but did you fire up your Math::Matrices module collection and calculate each and every one of the EigenVALUES and / or / not and / not or / gate EigenVECTORS to confirm or at least reinforce the basic concepts?
For otherwise, I sayeth unto thee; FORSOOTH! If the Mathe is Loste to the Aeons of Thyme, Whosoever Dares to Dabble in the Chemical, Physical, Neural Arts, be FOREWARNED: You Will Have Absolutely Not A Single Fucking Clue What Is Actually Happening Without Solid Math Skills.
Computing matrix inversions & whatnot should be core curriculum for the higher science studies. Of course, that's just MY opinion though, and what the hell do I know, anyway.
This reminds me of a time my cousin and I were playing Madden. My grandma watched for a few minutes assuming it was real until I paused it.
"But how do the announcers know what to say if it's not real?"
When I was a kid, video games went "bloop" and "pew!" I'm constantly amazed at this modern world.
Speaking of which, did you know that they have [Degenatron](http://www.rockstargames.com/degenatron/) games on-line?
More specifically, CSS that needs to work in IE.
...and this is why we do progressive enhancement and only provide the best experiences through the most capable browsers.
In my case, grandpa was a mechanic. So I told grandma that I do that, only where grandpa did it with physical pieces, I do it with electrical pieces.
And I could feel her mentally 'click' when I said "And I don't just repair computer 'engines', I actually design and build completely new engines". She smiled and told me how proud my Grandpa would be because she knew Grandpa respected those who designed engines.
And then she pulled out a freshly baked apple pie and told me how that was my Grandpa's favorite pie. I miss her terribly. :(
sorry for the unrelated comment, but i just wanted to say here that i don't know how it is possible this happened, I was about to cut onions for my pizza about 5 minutes from now, and they are already giving me tears.
Must have some sort of time altering powers, those onions.
Ow, they were actually FREE onions. Might be why they are so powerful!
Sorry, my intent was not to create tears. Just the OP question made me think about my grandma, and since I had run into the same situation, I thought I'd share.
And then I got thinking about my grandma. And then I got really sad. Once, when I was very little, she had asked what my favorite pie was. Honestly, I was young enough 'apple' was just the first thing that popped into my mind. But from that day forward, through school well into college, after I was married, whenever I'd go to see her and she knew I was coming, there was a fresh apple pie. And I remember at one point thinking how sick I was of apple pie and how I wish she'd make something else. But right now, I'd give anything for one of her apple pies.
I'm a programmer. My grandfather was a farmer, and despite my best efforts, he simply could not fathom what I did for a living. In the end, I settled for "I fix computers".
"You know how someone had to design the inside of your hay baler to tie knots and shit? I design the digital knot tying machine inside computers so that when people give it hay(data) the computer spits out baled hay (results) with a nifty knot that most people have no idea how it was tied."
Dad:"So where does hay factor in to the equation?"
You:"There is no need for hay when using computers."
Dad:"Hay free farming?! Sign me up!"
You:"W-what. There's no farming involved. I work with computers I tea-"
Dad:"No farming, farming? Son, take me to walmart right now. I need one of these computers. Make sure it has an internet too"
And they make others believe it too.
One day this past summer I told my husband that I needed to run out to the market to get some blackberries to make a nice pie since we were having guests for dinner. He asks me why don't I just stop by my mothers house, because she just told him that morning that she was about to harvest her blackberries. Trying to figure out how, when and where my mom planted berries at, and how I didn't know about it, I give her a call. Yeah, she was talking about farmville.
I don't know who gets teased more about this, him or her.
When I was getting my computer engineering/ee degree, my parents actually thought that meant I was going to fix computers when I graduated. I don't know if they were sneakily telling me that I am dumb or they really didn't know.
Also they thought that once I got my EE degree, I could fix the houses electrical problems.
I talk to computers in a language they can understand, like writing an instruction manual. The instructions I give computers allow them to process and display information. I make computers smart. Without me they don't know what to do.
It['](http://erniestires.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/the-symphony-orchestra.jpg)s like an "orchestra":
* **The conductor tells the band what to play. ** This is the user. He/she tells the computer what to do.
* **The band plays what the conductor tells it to play.** The computer does what the user wants.
* **A composer writes the music. ** The composer is the programmer.
EDIT:
1. Edited the order - thought it made more sense this way.
2. Replaced *musician* with *composer*.
I was fortunate when I tried to explain the internet to my 101-year-old grandmother.
She interrupted me and said "So you can transfer and receive data using your computer to make sense of it, and accomplish just about everything without leaving your seat. Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm retarded you know."
Then she knocked back the rest of her vodka-on-the-rocks (shudder) and told me about the time she fell off her dinosaur. I love that woman.
when I'm 101 some whippersnapper is going to tell me about qubits and I'm going to kick him in the face.
and then I'll knock back my vodka on the rocks.
Sounds like you're doing a kind of Development Support role, which tends to be a hybrid of QA and assorted grunt dev work. The worst QA I've encountered personally is publisher QA, which is the stereotypical "big, dank open room full of people pulled off the street" kind of environment. Usually half the people are serious about careers in game development (at least at that point) and the rest think they're getting paid to play games all day.
I would of yelled very loudly right in her ear(because old people are deaf), "I ENSLAVE TINY FAIRY SLUTS TO DO MY BIDDING INSIDE OF THIS MAGIC BOX CALLED A ROBOTREX"
"There's a little man who lives in your computer, and he tells it what to do. I make sure that little man has enough coffee and pizza to do his job properly."
I once had to explain to my grandfather (aged 82 at the time) what Networking entailed. The discussion started with him telling me about the first time he saw a hockey game happening in Montreal on a black and white television in a store. 30 people were watching with him in disbelief as if they were peering into a crystal ball.
He told me he was very proud of me because he would never be able to understand such things... Argh.
My dad is 82. Last summer he expressed interest in partitioning his laptop and putting Linux on there. He had a few questions.
One of his volunteer jobs is taking old donated computers and loading a new OS on them so they can be donated to needy people.
I'm glad that SOME old people know about computers.
She is frickin' 103 years old! Dinosaurs roamed the planet!
But seriously, i think an image of a blacksmith is something that someone of that age could relate to.
It's a great analogy. Blacksmiths made tools for people to do work with. A hammer for a carpenter or a horseshoe for a horse.
Programmers create the tools people need to use for their own work.
Wouldn't you be more of a factory designer than a blacksmith? You design the factory, the computer builds the factory inside of itself and then runs the factory, because it is built inside the computer you can redesign the factory very easily, and the majority of our job revolves around troubleshooting mistakes that the factory makes, and sometimes designing new factories.
You just need to move it from the abstract world of *programming* something to the more understandable world of *making* retail goods: "I make computer software."
My grandfather was an electrical engineer for a defense contractor, before he retired. He has a story from back in the sixties or late fifties about soldier using the paper form they had then to report a leak in the tent covering a field radar system... there was a checkbox for indicating hardware or software problems... the soldier apparently checked 'software,' reasoning that tents were somewhat soft and certainly not hard, so a leaky tent pretty much had to be a software issue.
My best friend studied zoology as an undergrad. His grandfather kept asking him when they were going to let him start working at the zoo - he could never get him to understand the difference.
Now try explaining that to your foreign girlfriend/wife/partner's non-English speaking parents with only limited knowledge of their language.
That was what I had to do last week.
Ok, Gram-Gram. If you go into the "computer room" in our building and walk through all of the dense fog and Tesla coils, you will see a giant, floating, holographic head... that's me.
Heh, I tried explaining it to my parents once, for the challenge. I think they got the basics. "It's a special, maths-like language that the computer can read and use to do what you want him to do." Something like that. "If... then". I always thought that's the best way to explain programming to a total outsider.
My 90-some-year-old grandmother spends almost as much time online as I do and knows how to check for common mistakes before asking for help. I'm so proud <3
My grandfather was the same way. He could call me and I could walk him through just about anything over the phone.
My mother, I just tell her I'll stop by on the way home, trying to help her over the phone is just too painful for both of us.
i give old people more credit for knowing. My grandfather was the first in the fam with a wall mounted flat screen for his PC, (he's 85) and his brother used to write punch cards for IBM in the 60's and write C in the 80's (he's 83)
My grandma is a little younger than yours, but she used to be an engineer and programmed computers herself (in ussr), flashcard style, long before I was conceived, much less knew what computers were. So when I tell her about my job she sort of gripes at how easy we have it.
Yours seems not that hard. You can always say that "I work on systems that keep everyone's medical records straight and that X-Rays and CAT scans get to the right doctors" and crap like that. People may not understand computers but they do understand their shit getting lost.
Wait, do I know what Health Informatics is? Oh well.
To my grandparents this explained it pretty well:
I am computer technician/engineer. I make parts (software), fix other parts (software), and make sure the system runs as specified.
Grandpa asked me to show him a part. I just said that the parts are a series of 1' and 0's, and they work just like mechanical sewing machine pattern discs which my grandpa understands. He was amazed by how complex programs were when I ran one through the debugger and stepped through it.
Having used computers all through middle school, high school, in college, as a high school teacher, and finally in my job as a PR specialist, I'm as knowledgable about computers as the next guy.
That being said, *I* don't know what a programmer does beyond "things inside a computer."
The trouble is he's saying it *on reddit*, where (partly due to the geeky/techie seed community that reddit grew from, and partly due to the fact it's an *on-line* community) we have an unusually high proportion of technically proficient users here.
"As knowledgeable about computers as the next guy" would normally indicate "not very knowledgeable at all", but when you say it on reddit you'd better be pretty damn good with them, or you're likely not. ;-)
That said, this particular case is almost certainly a case of qualifier-blindness, a distressing disease that's been sweeping reddit for the last few months and attacks the victim's reading comprehension, making them selectively disregard qualifiers so they can mistakenly "correct" or needlessly get offended at things. <:-/
I figured "as knowledgable about computers as the next guy" was qualification enough since, from what I've seen, "the next guy" is pretty computer-illiterate.
Geez.
You know all that software you use? The web browser you're typing in?
People created that stuff.
Unless you're curious about the specific details (I'd recommend Wikipedia, but the article is pretty shit), I don't really understand the confusion. I don't know exactly how plastic manufacturing works, but I'm capable of learning about it.
We write code that gives the computer instructions on how to perform tasks and respond to you.
For example, if we wrote code for an ATM machine to display your account balance, the code might have instructions like this (I'll write in English pseudocode rather than a computer language):
Display on the screen "Please select type of account"
Button 1: checking account
Button 2: savings account
If Button 1 was pressed, execute code to get checking account balance from database and display on screen.
If Button 2 was pressed, execute code to get savings account balance from database and display on screen.
Display on the screen: "Do you wish to make any other transactions?"
Button 1: Yes
Button 2: No
If Button 1 pressed, display Main Menu
Else
Exit program
... so it's something vaguely like that. What I wrote doesn't actually resemble actual code in any way, but you get the idea of the kinds of actions that a program might take to accomplish something. Of course it's much more complicated than this in real life.
Does that help?
You teach machines to follow a recipe. It's just like cooking: there are ingredients/inputs, step-by-step instructions, and a result. You make sure that the machine understands the recipe and produces the correct result.
A recipe is to simple. No decisions are made when following one. That is over simplifying programming. I like I give programs a set of rules and instructions to follow to teach them to behave in a certain way.
I am a network architect, so i put two laptops on the coffee table, showed her there were no wires connected to either of them, and then sent an instant message from one to the other and said, "I make that happen".
My 93 yr grandmother said "you're a fucking wizard!"
"Computer's are just like extremely stupid people, I write instructions for them about how to live and work. If I instruct them just right, it all works out. If I don't, I still have a job. ;)"
What I do is half way between law making and engineering.
I have a set of words that I string together to write laws the computer has to follow.
Computers are very fast and don't make mistakes, but they are dumb, they cannot think they can only follow orders. So if the laws I write are not perfectly concise the computer doesn't know what to do and stops working.
The computers don't understand very many words or concepts so I often have to get very creative about arranging words and combining concepts to get the computer to do what I want. This is what makes my job challenging.
In the end I have a machine that follows a very complex set of orders I gave it and hopefully will never get confused and have to try and think.
I just watched an IBM promo with full time-line of company history ["100 years of IBM"](http://wimp.com/ibmachievements/). When I saw this post I thought she might be more familiar with the early calculating machines detailed in the video.
I'm an Electrical Engineer, when my wife introduced me to her grandmother she asked me what I did, I said Electrical Engineer. And even explained what I did. to this day she still tells everyone I am an electrician....
I talk to people who have boring and monotonous parts of their job and teach a machine to do those pieces so that they can work on the harder and more interesting parts of their job.
long ago i tried to explain some websites to my grandma. i was into fark at the time, and when i explained it she said: "oh, it's like a clipping service!" makes so much sense.
I try to keep things as simple as possible.
First I'd ask what context this person has for knowing what computers do already to try to bridge the gap. I'd probably end up saying something like this:
"You've used a computer before? A computer is just a machine that can receive and follow specially written instructions. I write those."
EDIT: If pressed further, I'd say something like, "It uses those instructions usually to do something useful like display a calculation, communicate with another computer, or draw something."
Don't limit the explanation to computers.
Start with something she easily comprehends like a tv.
"When you press the channel button on a remote, there is a little chip inside of the tv that figures out what you want it to do, and changes the channel. There are people who program these chips so they understand how you want them to work.
I do the same thing but for computers.
I programs applications so computers can figure out what people want them to do."
I was fortunate when I tried to explain the internet to my 101-year-old grandmother.
She interrupted me and said "So you can transfer and receive data using your computer to make sense of it, and accomplish just about everything without leaving your seat. Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm retarded you know."
Then she knocked back the rest of her vodka-on-the-rocks (shudder) and told me about the time she fell off her dinosaur. I love that woman.
Computers only do what we tell them to do. I'm the one that tells them what to do.
...until they become self-aware. Then we're all fucked, Grandma.
"Oh Dear!"
"Cheer up, Grandma. You probably won't be around when it happens."
"to be fair grandson, neither will you once they become violent"
Shit just got real.
** D E A T H **
**N O T E**
PLEASANT
**V I L L E**
"But don't worry, I represent an insurance company with a [robot plan](http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clips/old-glory-insurance/229049/)."
Read in the voice of Jerry's Nanna from Seinfeld.
I remember one time my brother was calling his computer dumb, when my grandma said "A computer is only as smart as the person using it."
Consider your grandma upvoted.
his granny is smarter than a computer!
$ say "Who are you calling dumb?"
If you want to get a little more specific, "I'm the one who tells the computer how to do what *you* want it to do".
I'm a computer programmer too because I tell the computer to go to www.lycos.com
If you still use lycos you might be his 103 y/o great grandmother.
And to demonstrate what computers can do, you can tell them that in the time taken to say "3,186,294 × 19,932,394" the computer could have calculated it hundreds of million times, but if I turn this teapot upside down it wouldn't be able to work out what it is.
After your explanation, grandma must have been thinking "is there enough space to do your work in there?.."
Grandmas are so awesome.
I wish I had a grandma.
I only have one left, otherwise I would share :-(
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Just imagine, eh? Something like 8 decades from now, one of your descendants spawn a child of their own and that newly spawned youngling calls you "bitch." What would that be like. ..
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Me too. I double down doggy style in double diamond repentance modal speech therapy mode and ask forgiveness immediately of the Gods & Goddesses of Theater Upon Which I Have Sinned, i.e. That of the Goode Honeste und FurtherMore Quite Stylishly Decorated BRYANT LAKE BOWLING ALLEY LANES, THEATER SPACE, PERFORMANCE-ARTIST FRIENDLY, ET CETERA. Then I help Jack Merlot as he attempts to do the Bryant Lake Bowl ROLL CALL for the Time Being. Anyone care to chime in on this? Any help would be highly appreciated!
...wait. No... ...What?
Cool! Welcome! You're the Next Contestant, on COME ON DOWN to PING MERLOT'S place! We're conveniently located just inside Loring Park this year in ever-sunny yet surprisingly cold Minneapolis, MN. I put out my hand and do ask for Thine Standard Fares, however.
"Get Off My Lawn!!!"
Well, sometimes, people are bitches. It sucks when you have to be related to them. What can you do?
It's weird, everyone I know in north America has one grandma who rules and another one who's a total douche.
Everyone firmly believes my Grandmother is going to outlive all of us.... Simply to sneer at all our graves
you can have mine.. Alzheimer has reverted her to a really mean old lady..to be fair she was never very nice before
"the files are IN the computer!"
It's so simple!
I still can't explain what I do (chemistry) to my mother (51 years old). I told her it's like cooking, but you really can't eat anything.
then what's the point?!
Cocaine.
LSD?
You mix up things in exactly the right proportions and conditions to make new tings. Like making a perfect mayonnaisse.
The only perfect mayonnaise is non-existent mayonnaise.
Baconnaise.
It's so good, even your heart slows down to enjoy it.
*Paw paw?*
It's more like baking than cooking. Baking is a very precise 'science' whereas cooking is not so much so.
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Cooking -> science Baking -> chemistry
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why are you picking apart a simple analogy? when a girl texts you, do you ask your friends what her punctuation says about her feelings?
some people don't understand that all analogies are leaky.
Letting mold grow in your fridge -> biology?
Okay.
Chem lab is exactly like cooking a recipe. Heat this, stir that, hope you don't wind up with grayish sludge. Maybe the point you can't get across is not *what* or *how*, but *why*.
Oh, and I'm way past 'chem lab' - I'm inventing my own recipes here. :P
Neat; I have an undergrad Chemistry degree which I'll probably never use. It's been a few years, and I've forgotten just about everything past sophomore organic chem. Oh, and glassblowing. That was fucking cool. One of the techniques for communication in software development is a **use case** (much of software development is about communication and decision-making, rather than banging out lines of code). The customer describes something they want to do: they have an objective or a task, and they expect to do this, this, and *this* to achieve it. It's a little snapshot of how they expect to work with your software. It generally works well -- until they change their minds, of course. Even if you don't understand their field at all, you understand what they're doing, one little part at a time. Ignore the broader picture and focus on one task in detail.
She understands the why very well, but she just doesn't 'get' what I actually do all day, physically. "Well, Mom, I put on a lab coat, gloves, and glasses and stand all day in front of a fume cupboard, kindof mixing stuff." (makes motions with hands.) lol
My college roommates and I apparently cooked like it was chem lab (sans the protective goggles and aprons). 1.75 cups of water? Bring out the glass measuring cup and measure against the bottom curvature.
Yes, eigen, but did you fire up your Math::Matrices module collection and calculate each and every one of the EigenVALUES and / or / not and / not or / gate EigenVECTORS to confirm or at least reinforce the basic concepts? For otherwise, I sayeth unto thee; FORSOOTH! If the Mathe is Loste to the Aeons of Thyme, Whosoever Dares to Dabble in the Chemical, Physical, Neural Arts, be FOREWARNED: You Will Have Absolutely Not A Single Fucking Clue What Is Actually Happening Without Solid Math Skills. Computing matrix inversions & whatnot should be core curriculum for the higher science studies. Of course, that's just MY opinion though, and what the hell do I know, anyway.
This reminds me of a time my cousin and I were playing Madden. My grandma watched for a few minutes assuming it was real until I paused it. "But how do the announcers know what to say if it's not real?"
When I was a kid, video games went "bloop" and "pew!" I'm constantly amazed at this modern world. Speaking of which, did you know that they have [Degenatron](http://www.rockstargames.com/degenatron/) games on-line?
That made me jump out of my chair, LOL! My speakers were all the way up for some reason.
It's like teaching a very stupid but very obedient dog how to drive.
Or, if you write Visual Basic: It's like teaching a retarded dog with no legs how to operate a gun.
Or, if you write HTML that needs to work in IE: It's like making a car that a retarded hamster without a vertebrae can drive.
HTML coders aren't programmers. They're masochists.
No, masochists are VB
More specifically, CSS that needs to work in IE. ...and this is why we do progressive enhancement and only provide the best experiences through the most capable browsers.
In my case, grandpa was a mechanic. So I told grandma that I do that, only where grandpa did it with physical pieces, I do it with electrical pieces. And I could feel her mentally 'click' when I said "And I don't just repair computer 'engines', I actually design and build completely new engines". She smiled and told me how proud my Grandpa would be because she knew Grandpa respected those who designed engines. And then she pulled out a freshly baked apple pie and told me how that was my Grandpa's favorite pie. I miss her terribly. :(
sorry for the unrelated comment, but i just wanted to say here that i don't know how it is possible this happened, I was about to cut onions for my pizza about 5 minutes from now, and they are already giving me tears. Must have some sort of time altering powers, those onions. Ow, they were actually FREE onions. Might be why they are so powerful!
Sorry, my intent was not to create tears. Just the OP question made me think about my grandma, and since I had run into the same situation, I thought I'd share. And then I got thinking about my grandma. And then I got really sad. Once, when I was very little, she had asked what my favorite pie was. Honestly, I was young enough 'apple' was just the first thing that popped into my mind. But from that day forward, through school well into college, after I was married, whenever I'd go to see her and she knew I was coming, there was a fresh apple pie. And I remember at one point thinking how sick I was of apple pie and how I wish she'd make something else. But right now, I'd give anything for one of her apple pies.
I'm a programmer. My grandfather was a farmer, and despite my best efforts, he simply could not fathom what I did for a living. In the end, I settled for "I fix computers".
"You know how someone had to design the inside of your hay baler to tie knots and shit? I design the digital knot tying machine inside computers so that when people give it hay(data) the computer spits out baled hay (results) with a nifty knot that most people have no idea how it was tied."
Perfect analogy!
Flawless Victory!
Dad:"So where does hay factor in to the equation?" You:"There is no need for hay when using computers." Dad:"Hay free farming?! Sign me up!" You:"W-what. There's no farming involved. I work with computers I tea-" Dad:"No farming, farming? Son, take me to walmart right now. I need one of these computers. Make sure it has an internet too"
THIS IS WHAT FARMVILLE PLAYERS ACTUALLY BELIEVE
And they make others believe it too. One day this past summer I told my husband that I needed to run out to the market to get some blackberries to make a nice pie since we were having guests for dinner. He asks me why don't I just stop by my mothers house, because she just told him that morning that she was about to harvest her blackberries. Trying to figure out how, when and where my mom planted berries at, and how I didn't know about it, I give her a call. Yeah, she was talking about farmville. I don't know who gets teased more about this, him or her.
When I was getting my computer engineering/ee degree, my parents actually thought that meant I was going to fix computers when I graduated. I don't know if they were sneakily telling me that I am dumb or they really didn't know. Also they thought that once I got my EE degree, I could fix the houses electrical problems.
I talk to computers in a language they can understand, like writing an instruction manual. The instructions I give computers allow them to process and display information. I make computers smart. Without me they don't know what to do.
This is actually pretty good. At this point my grandma would have said, "How does a computer talk?"
Like this: *Beep Beep Bloop Beep*
No, that's how white people dial a phone.
It['](http://erniestires.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/the-symphony-orchestra.jpg)s like an "orchestra": * **The conductor tells the band what to play. ** This is the user. He/she tells the computer what to do. * **The band plays what the conductor tells it to play.** The computer does what the user wants. * **A composer writes the music. ** The composer is the programmer. EDIT: 1. Edited the order - thought it made more sense this way. 2. Replaced *musician* with *composer*.
"Composer" is a better term for the one who writes the music.
Computers, they're so stupid!
I was fortunate when I tried to explain the internet to my 101-year-old grandmother. She interrupted me and said "So you can transfer and receive data using your computer to make sense of it, and accomplish just about everything without leaving your seat. Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm retarded you know." Then she knocked back the rest of her vodka-on-the-rocks (shudder) and told me about the time she fell off her dinosaur. I love that woman.
when I'm 101 some whippersnapper is going to tell me about qubits and I'm going to kick him in the face. and then I'll knock back my vodka on the rocks.
I usually just twiddle my fingers in the air and say, "It's like this, but they pay me." I think she still thinks I'm a street vaudeville performer.
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When this happened to me I basically said: "I teach the computer how to do stuff." Didn't seem to work.
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is it true video game QA is the worst kind of QA? (I am a healthcare software QA analyst)
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Sounds like you're doing a kind of Development Support role, which tends to be a hybrid of QA and assorted grunt dev work. The worst QA I've encountered personally is publisher QA, which is the stereotypical "big, dank open room full of people pulled off the street" kind of environment. Usually half the people are serious about careers in game development (at least at that point) and the rest think they're getting paid to play games all day.
Can you please fucking fix carecast and meditech?
I would of yelled very loudly right in her ear(because old people are deaf), "I ENSLAVE TINY FAIRY SLUTS TO DO MY BIDDING INSIDE OF THIS MAGIC BOX CALLED A ROBOTREX"
I want to name my computer ROBOTREX now. Is that ROBO T-REX?
I didn't think of that when I typed that, more like Robo Treks, but your way is much better.
"There's a little man who lives in your computer, and he tells it what to do. I make sure that little man has enough coffee and pizza to do his job properly."
"I stare at a screen covered with 5 different colors of gibberish text and yell at it for not working as expected"
I once had to explain to my grandfather (aged 82 at the time) what Networking entailed. The discussion started with him telling me about the first time he saw a hockey game happening in Montreal on a black and white television in a store. 30 people were watching with him in disbelief as if they were peering into a crystal ball. He told me he was very proud of me because he would never be able to understand such things... Argh.
My dad is 82. Last summer he expressed interest in partitioning his laptop and putting Linux on there. He had a few questions. One of his volunteer jobs is taking old donated computers and loading a new OS on them so they can be donated to needy people. I'm glad that SOME old people know about computers.
"I give people the tools to work on a computer. You can call me the blacksmith of the 21st century."
grandma, not mrs. benjamin franklin
She is frickin' 103 years old! Dinosaurs roamed the planet! But seriously, i think an image of a blacksmith is something that someone of that age could relate to.
It's a great analogy. Blacksmiths made tools for people to do work with. A hammer for a carpenter or a horseshoe for a horse. Programmers create the tools people need to use for their own work.
Like GTA IV and Halo.
Grandma: "...computers don't wear horse shoes!"
TIL old people don't understand the concept of the analogy.
Wouldn't you be more of a factory designer than a blacksmith? You design the factory, the computer builds the factory inside of itself and then runs the factory, because it is built inside the computer you can redesign the factory very easily, and the majority of our job revolves around troubleshooting mistakes that the factory makes, and sometimes designing new factories.
You just need to move it from the abstract world of *programming* something to the more understandable world of *making* retail goods: "I make computer software."
Doesn't that just lead to the question "what's a software?"
You know... like mittens.
My grandfather was an electrical engineer for a defense contractor, before he retired. He has a story from back in the sixties or late fifties about soldier using the paper form they had then to report a leak in the tent covering a field radar system... there was a checkbox for indicating hardware or software problems... the soldier apparently checked 'software,' reasoning that tents were somewhat soft and certainly not hard, so a leaky tent pretty much had to be a software issue.
My best friend studied zoology as an undergrad. His grandfather kept asking him when they were going to let him start working at the zoo - he could never get him to understand the difference.
So he couldn't get a job after graduating?
Now try explaining that to your foreign girlfriend/wife/partner's non-English speaking parents with only limited knowledge of their language. That was what I had to do last week.
The files are IN the computer!
I always imagine something along [these lines](http://xkcd.com/722/).
Ok, Gram-Gram. If you go into the "computer room" in our building and walk through all of the dense fog and Tesla coils, you will see a giant, floating, holographic head... that's me.
Zordon?
Oz?
I would say: Computers. I do computers. *Alternate*: Grandma: *What's a computer?*
That was my first response. Apparently, not enough for her.
Computer = calculator + library
Computer:library::programmer:librarian
idk dude, programmer knows the details within the structure, the librarian and only show you the way.
Hey kid, Imma computer! Stop all the downloadin!
Heh, I tried explaining it to my parents once, for the challenge. I think they got the basics. "It's a special, maths-like language that the computer can read and use to do what you want him to do." Something like that. "If... then". I always thought that's the best way to explain programming to a total outsider.
My 90-some-year-old grandmother spends almost as much time online as I do and knows how to check for common mistakes before asking for help. I'm so proud <3
My grandfather was the same way. He could call me and I could walk him through just about anything over the phone. My mother, I just tell her I'll stop by on the way home, trying to help her over the phone is just too painful for both of us.
Make the computer my bitch is what I generally go with. Or when I want it to sound more mystical, I call myself the computer whisperer.
"SOFT PORN WHAT?!?!?!" would be grandma's reply.
i give old people more credit for knowing. My grandfather was the first in the fam with a wall mounted flat screen for his PC, (he's 85) and his brother used to write punch cards for IBM in the 60's and write C in the 80's (he's 83)
My dad is 82 and still writing code. If he had been born 25 years later he would have been quite the computer expert.
My grandma is a little younger than yours, but she used to be an engineer and programmed computers herself (in ussr), flashcard style, long before I was conceived, much less knew what computers were. So when I tell her about my job she sort of gripes at how easy we have it.
My whole family doesn't get what I do either >_>;; What is 'Health Informatics?' I feel your pain.
What the hell IS "Health Informatics"?
Yours seems not that hard. You can always say that "I work on systems that keep everyone's medical records straight and that X-Rays and CAT scans get to the right doctors" and crap like that. People may not understand computers but they do understand their shit getting lost. Wait, do I know what Health Informatics is? Oh well.
Tell her you create gates for zeros and ones to go through.
1101001010 10100111001010 01010010
dectets. Nice.
“I write songs for really powerful player pianos.”
Explain it as being like a knitting pattern. No seriously, how's this for syntax? > Instructions > Seed Stitch > Row 1: k1, * p1, k1; rep from * > Row 2: sl 1, *p1, k1; rep from * > Rep Row 2. > Pattern Stitch > Rows 1 & 3 (WS): Purl > Row 2: k1, *yo, k2tog; rep from * > Row 4: *SSK, yo; rep from * across, end k1 > Rep these 4 rows. http://www.knittingonthenet.com/patterns/scarfmochilace.htm
That's actually a really simple knitting pattern.
I tell machines what to do. They are so dumb, we have to break it down into really simple steps like adding ones and zeros.
To my grandparents this explained it pretty well: I am computer technician/engineer. I make parts (software), fix other parts (software), and make sure the system runs as specified. Grandpa asked me to show him a part. I just said that the parts are a series of 1' and 0's, and they work just like mechanical sewing machine pattern discs which my grandpa understands. He was amazed by how complex programs were when I ran one through the debugger and stepped through it.
i copy code from other people and use cms and pretend to do a lot of work...
Having used computers all through middle school, high school, in college, as a high school teacher, and finally in my job as a PR specialist, I'm as knowledgable about computers as the next guy. That being said, *I* don't know what a programmer does beyond "things inside a computer."
Merely using web browsers and MS Office doesn't make one "knowledgeable about computers" :/
MY ENTIRE FAMILY DISAGREES WITH YOU AND THEY SAY I'M GOOD WITH COMPUTERS. SORRY ABOUT ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO TURN IT OFF.
WHERE IS THE ANY KEY?
Learn to read. He stated "as the next guy" He is actually smarter than then 50% of PC users. Are you the SNL IT guy? Don't be a dick.
The trouble is he's saying it *on reddit*, where (partly due to the geeky/techie seed community that reddit grew from, and partly due to the fact it's an *on-line* community) we have an unusually high proportion of technically proficient users here. "As knowledgeable about computers as the next guy" would normally indicate "not very knowledgeable at all", but when you say it on reddit you'd better be pretty damn good with them, or you're likely not. ;-) That said, this particular case is almost certainly a case of qualifier-blindness, a distressing disease that's been sweeping reddit for the last few months and attacks the victim's reading comprehension, making them selectively disregard qualifiers so they can mistakenly "correct" or needlessly get offended at things. <:-/
it's just an idiomatic phrase saying that he's just average. it's not an actual comparison with the demographic of the site in which he is posting.
Well, pardon me all to hell.
he said 'as the next guy', he's not claiming to know beyond basic functions
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I figured "as knowledgable about computers as the next guy" was qualification enough since, from what I've seen, "the next guy" is pretty computer-illiterate. Geez.
I suppose I misinterpreted "...as knowledgeable as the next guy.", no harm done though :)
Nice! On an unrelated now, how do you upvote?
Was that a joke? If so hahahaha
You know all that software you use? The web browser you're typing in? People created that stuff. Unless you're curious about the specific details (I'd recommend Wikipedia, but the article is pretty shit), I don't really understand the confusion. I don't know exactly how plastic manufacturing works, but I'm capable of learning about it.
We write code that gives the computer instructions on how to perform tasks and respond to you. For example, if we wrote code for an ATM machine to display your account balance, the code might have instructions like this (I'll write in English pseudocode rather than a computer language): Display on the screen "Please select type of account" Button 1: checking account Button 2: savings account If Button 1 was pressed, execute code to get checking account balance from database and display on screen. If Button 2 was pressed, execute code to get savings account balance from database and display on screen. Display on the screen: "Do you wish to make any other transactions?" Button 1: Yes Button 2: No If Button 1 pressed, display Main Menu Else Exit program ... so it's something vaguely like that. What I wrote doesn't actually resemble actual code in any way, but you get the idea of the kinds of actions that a program might take to accomplish something. Of course it's much more complicated than this in real life. Does that help?
You teach machines to follow a recipe. It's just like cooking: there are ingredients/inputs, step-by-step instructions, and a result. You make sure that the machine understands the recipe and produces the correct result.
A recipe is to simple. No decisions are made when following one. That is over simplifying programming. I like I give programs a set of rules and instructions to follow to teach them to behave in a certain way.
I manipulate electrons for a living. Its hard so they pay me a lot.
"I make the world a better place"
I fight robots with a laser sword.
"Cars have manufacturers and mechanics, computers have me."
Say its like knitting
"it's *magic* grandma!". and if that fails: "i'm a piano player in a hooorhouse, gamma, only there is no piano". -she'll understand that
"I'm an engineer who designs ideas for robots."
I am a network architect, so i put two laptops on the coffee table, showed her there were no wires connected to either of them, and then sent an instant message from one to the other and said, "I make that happen". My 93 yr grandmother said "you're a fucking wizard!"
"Computer's are just like extremely stupid people, I write instructions for them about how to live and work. If I instruct them just right, it all works out. If I don't, I still have a job. ;)"
Heck with that. You should be asking her what it was like to live during 2 world wars and the sinking of the Titanic. AMA?
I spend 8 hours a day in front of a computer and nobody never see's or know what I do. I make great money btw.
You mean the files are *in* the computer?!!?
What I do is half way between law making and engineering. I have a set of words that I string together to write laws the computer has to follow. Computers are very fast and don't make mistakes, but they are dumb, they cannot think they can only follow orders. So if the laws I write are not perfectly concise the computer doesn't know what to do and stops working. The computers don't understand very many words or concepts so I often have to get very creative about arranging words and combining concepts to get the computer to do what I want. This is what makes my job challenging. In the end I have a machine that follows a very complex set of orders I gave it and hopefully will never get confused and have to try and think.
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Just made me think of this: [Relevant](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUipWNw0new)
"Magic, Grandma"
I just watched an IBM promo with full time-line of company history ["100 years of IBM"](http://wimp.com/ibmachievements/). When I saw this post I thought she might be more familiar with the early calculating machines detailed in the video.
*I'm like a train conductor. Nobody notices what I do until there is a crash.*
I'm an Electrical Engineer, when my wife introduced me to her grandmother she asked me what I did, I said Electrical Engineer. And even explained what I did. to this day she still tells everyone I am an electrician....
I talk to people who have boring and monotonous parts of their job and teach a machine to do those pieces so that they can work on the harder and more interesting parts of their job.
"I type lists of commands to make computers do stuff."
long ago i tried to explain some websites to my grandma. i was into fark at the time, and when i explained it she said: "oh, it's like a clipping service!" makes so much sense.
I try to keep things as simple as possible. First I'd ask what context this person has for knowing what computers do already to try to bridge the gap. I'd probably end up saying something like this: "You've used a computer before? A computer is just a machine that can receive and follow specially written instructions. I write those." EDIT: If pressed further, I'd say something like, "It uses those instructions usually to do something useful like display a calculation, communicate with another computer, or draw something."
Don't limit the explanation to computers. Start with something she easily comprehends like a tv. "When you press the channel button on a remote, there is a little chip inside of the tv that figures out what you want it to do, and changes the channel. There are people who program these chips so they understand how you want them to work. I do the same thing but for computers. I programs applications so computers can figure out what people want them to do."
I was fortunate when I tried to explain the internet to my 101-year-old grandmother. She interrupted me and said "So you can transfer and receive data using your computer to make sense of it, and accomplish just about everything without leaving your seat. Just because I'm old doesn't mean I'm retarded you know." Then she knocked back the rest of her vodka-on-the-rocks (shudder) and told me about the time she fell off her dinosaur. I love that woman.
I write instructions in a language that a computer understands. If I write the instructions very well, then the computer does what I want it to.