What's important for young people to know, about computer science today and what should they be preparing for upon graduation 4 years from now?
- A CS degree doesn't mean you will become Dilbert
- A CS degree doesn't mean your job will be outsourced to a BRIC country.
- CS is not just programming.
- A BS in CS can lead to fields like AI/robotics, bioinformatics, finance (well, that might be untimely), etc.
- It's a myth that CS isn't for girls (mention Lady Lovelace ;) ).
I think (the negations of) those are still the most popular harmful stereotypes about studying CS.
1) Get involved in communities (like HN, and local CS interest groups) - getting involved while young can lead to many opportunities that "just having a CS degree" wont lead you to.
2) Most university CS programs stick to 1 or 2 languages at the core (java or c/c++) - tell them to try and implement some of their homework in ruby / python / or even things like Scala to learn the similarities and differences between programming languages. This will only be more helpful as you progress into higher level courses.
It would be interesting if there were initiatives aiming at promoting programming among kids in the 10-12 y.o. age range. Since hi-school is too easy and kids have way too much free time, if they could get the "programming bug" before they're old enough to go to college, everyone would win. They could study math or physics instead of CS, because they already know how to code. And they could even postpone college for a couple of years and try to launch a company while they're young and full of stamina.
Just my 0.02 USD...