Ask HN: Have your parents done anything to make you interested in Science or IT? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have your parents done anything to make you interested in Science or IT?

29 pointsbaby53 comments

My dad taught CS at high-school beside math, physics, and chess. He got a C64 when I was in kindergarten and showed me how to load up games and write simple three liners in Basic.

As a young teen I got interested in game development and my dad taught me some Pascal and C. I never really gained much traction because I just couldn't see how learning about data structures and OO could benefit me if all I wanted to do was putting pixels on the screen. But it was enough to realize that programming could be fun.

Later I decided to study CS because I thought I had a knack for solving logical problems and that learning how to program wouldn't be too hard for me. This turned out to be true, and although I would drop out of college soon I was always in the top 10 percentage when it came to doing programming assignments or exams.

I spent my 20s making music, getting drunk and chasing after girls. When my dad became ill with cancer I had to find a job fast in order to support myself, so I skimmed Michael Hartl's Rails book and put Rails on my CV. Shortly thereafter I scored a job at a corporation working on a Rails project with about 50-ish Models and what felt like hundreds of routes and controllers, not knowing why the parentheses were missing from the method calls or where some of those Methods are defined (in the Helpers folder).

I showed my dad what I was working on when I visited him at the hospital and he seemed pleased. Two months after he died I got laid off after working there for a year because the company made some losses (about 22 million Euros if I remember correctly) and I wasn't contributing to the core business. I was going to quit anyway because I didn't feel challenged anymore.

Anyway: Yes. My dad has done a lot to make me interested in Science and IT.

Nope. There never was much emphasis on education at home. The climate was that if you were old enough to work, you should go work. School was for those not quite strong enough to do "real" work.

I always had the education bug in me, so when I could afford it I went to school, finished my bachelors degree and landed a programming job. (This was two years ago, I am currently 31 years old, so a late bloomer). However I have always had a deep inclination towards tech, and started coding around the age of 10-11. Over the years I just didnt think much of my skills as I didnt have a degree, thus deeming myself not good enough :P

And currently I couldnt be happier :) I understand where my parents were coming from. It was a different time.

French here (context).

Legos [1] (starting with Duplo Train) and Kapla [2] were probably the most stimulating toys I played with. Also, Logiblocs [3], Meccano. Oh, and some random basic electric components (lamps, batteries, switches, etc). I did have some more "sciency" toys like chemistry kit or such but I quickly got bored with these.

But I think that, before that, being given the opportunity to read books, play around with a computer and having limitations (restricted computer time, limited Internet subscription, finite number of books) really made me think to find workarounds or other ways to pass the time.

tl;dr: Science and IT skills are just results of a stimulated mind from the early age

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapla

[3] http://www.logiblocs.com/

[4] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano

Italian here (again, for context). My mother instilled the passion for reading in me when I was a little child. It didn't push me towards anything in particular, but it gave me the possibility to find what really interested me. I'll never be able to thank my mommy enough.

Yes, but not deliberately. It was the 80's. Gadgets abounded. I'd dismantle things to see how they worked, and would then have to rapidly re-assemble them upon hearing the crunch of tyres on gravel, as otherwise a hiding would ensue. Turns out time-pressured strip-downs and assemblies of pretty much every appliance in the house begat something of a mechanical aptitude. I remember asking for a C64 for christmas, and being heartbroken when I was given a Sega Master System instead... and then trading the Sega for my godfather's C64, much to my parents' chagrin.

I then spent most of my teen years being yelled at for spending time in front of computers, and having unsaved work vanished by plugs being pulled from walls, etc., and having books yanked from under my nose for being "antisocial".

Twenty years on, they still want to know when I plan on getting a "real job" and becoming a banker/accountant/journalist/dinosaur.

Early in my life, not directly, but they did support me learning anything. Whatever I wanted to learn about, they taught me if they knew it, or learned with me if they didn't. Later on (in my teens) when I was narrowing in on technology, they gave some gentle nudges towards engineering because of the good long-term life prospects. But when I went through a phase in HS where I thought maybe I wanted to be a journalist, they never pushed back and said "no no, engineering is better".

I think they were less concerned with career choice for me (or my sister) than they were with making sure we came out good people able to make our way in the world, by whatever means made sense. They did stress that sometimes any work will suck, but always choose something I find interesting, becuase I'll spend a third of my life working, and why choose to be unhappy all that time?

This this this. I was homeschooled up until high school, so my childhood was just a long swath of time to get really into obscure things. I could map out ages 3-15 as phases of things I was obsessed with (Batman, Pokemon, Magic Tricks, acting, Harry Potter, making things out of duct tape, film making, making websites, and coding), and every step of the way - no matter how obscure or ridiculous the future prospects were - my parents would feed the passion.

When I have kids, I'll definitely try to make science and engineering seem cool (by sneaking movies that glorify building things and scientific discovery, like the Iron Man series and Cosmos), but I'll focus on getting really into whatever my future progeny happen to stumble on themselves.

My mother hired her friend "fortune-teller" when I was like 1 or 2 years old, and she predicted that I'll become a "computer master".

I'm an atheist now, and I don't believe in any nonscientific stuff, but my whole teen age I thought "I'll become a computer master", so I had no other choice probably.

Still don't know if this was a deliberate attempt to guide me to computers, or my mother really believed in fortune-telling.

Yes, but I think somewhat inadvertently. My mother bought a computer for the house. She made sure to show me how to use the basics of the computer but I really think I just used it for playing video games. Sooner or later my mother decided to put software on the computer to restrict my amount of usage and so forth. I started reading all of the manuals and documentation I could find and eventually found security flaws and ways to bypass the restrictions. This turned into a game of cat and mouse over the years until I eventually got my own computer at around 17 or so. By that time I had gone from playing games to spending all of my time writing software or finding vulnerabilities in my school district's systems.

I really think the constants attempts to lock me out and the subsequent research and trial-and-error of circumventing all of the restrictions really had a great hand in getting me interested in IT. It also gave me the understanding that putting forth great effort towards a problem yields great results.

I grew up in china, my family was among the first families to get a home computer in China, thanks to my parents (They worked in Germany and brought one back). many of my classmates got their first computers at their high school age. but we got a 486dx33 when I was in elementary school (around 94 I think). But the machine was new to my parents too, they couldn’t provide any CS education to me. I was mainly exploring it myself. it has few games pre-installed, I spent a great amount of time on them. I also created lots of art works with the paint program of win3.2.

I was sent to a student club and then later a weekend school to learn programming. both of them were targeting ACM contest, the only usage of computer those Chinese educators could think of. I hated programming, I couldn’t get it at all.

Then in junior high, I met with another student who not only had a computer but also had network at home. I don’t know if it’s internet, I didn’t have a chance to see it or try it. He basically described it to me when we had breaks during the PE class. It seems to have a BBS system, and tons of pirated games. One game he told me was about building a Mars colony and that game blew me away. I soon fell in love with games and then QBasic. I spent lots of time creating images and animations with QB. I worked for three days without sleeping to duplicate a Mario game. I probably didn’t even know the name collision detection. I just solved everything my own ways.

I didn’t have any hard time deciding which major to take in college, it must be CS. My interests in CS have changed over the years, from gaming to computer graphics to entrepreneurship. But I still love computer very much.

I really want to thank my parents for all these. Even they don’t know too much about technology, they have done their best to expose it to me. I remember when we wanted to purchase a second computer because our 486dx33 was too old, I asked for a voodoo card with two chips (along with many other high-end parts). The machine was quite expensive (about $2000) and was a lot to ask from them (because of the salary level in China at that time). But they never said so.

No. Or maybe yes, they bought me a Commodore 64 and a BASIC book when I was a kid. It was quite popular at that time for people to have a personal computer. The OS presented itself essentially as a basic interpreter, so learning how to use the computer usually consisted in learning BASIC.

Yes! I have to thank my parents for buying me a Timex 2068 back in 1985.

As well as giving me pocket money for Crash Magazine, Micro Hobby, Micromania, Computer Shopper, Dr. Dobbs, C++ Report and The C User's Journal (latter The C/C++ User's Journal).

Additionally I also got quite a few programming books as birthday and Christmas gits.

I own them much, as on those days there was no Internet and only very kids living in the Lisbon could afford BBS connections.

So buying such magazines and books was the only way to build up knowledge, pairing with getting to know other people with similar interests.

My dad was an accountant, and never said so explicitly, but he made it clear through the books on his shelves, his investment in technology like PCs and portable computers, and racks and racks of floppies, that a serious person should educate themself in programming.

I tried, hard, to emulate him, and though I went on an entirely different path (theatre, design, etc.) I've found myself, 15 years later, as a front end web dev learning as much backend as I have time for. I feel like I've only now started to fulfill some of what I aspired to as a child, watching my father learn to code.

Nope, my parents did nothing at all to make me interested in computers or electronics. It was a fully self made decision. My father even lightly discouraged me from computers, telling me that long hours in front of the computer is something very unhealthy.

When I was a kid I spent more time outdoors socializing and playing sports, which I think turned out to be better for me than had I sat in front of the computer for 14 hours every day.

My parents are intellectuals both big on giving us opportunities. My dad was a major geek before computers were in every home but never programmed one or used one until he made one available for us. Before that he worked in a building where telephone switchboards were being operated. There he used a combination of Telex machines, morse code "beepers", voice radios and Minitel to help manage a sea port and handle emergencies when one arose.

He learned multiple languages during long night shifts talking with radio operators aboard ships in and near the harbour. At the time of retirement there were no computers in his office (save for arguably the Minitel).

One Christmas a few years before his retirement he brought home a Tandy 1000EX. We couldn't really afford it so we had to cut elsewhere but my parents knew that it'd be handy for us and they were right. We were one of the first families in the city with one and it helped shape my understanding of the world in ways I couldn't fathom at the time.

I'm glad my parents did the sacrifice.

My father got a master craftsman certificate in electronics and worked a lot from home. At some point I decided I want to know what he's doing and also wanted to understand it - one of the ideas a kid has when he sees his dad doing things he doesn't understand I guess. My interests changed after we got our first computer (286dx IIRC), I found it way more entertaining.

One day I've seen a book about programming in QBasic and my parents got it for me. They always wanted me to learn new things and to learn things I like / enjoy, so I had the pleasure of regularly getting my hands on one or two new books about programming and other IT related things.

They supported everything I did, especially LAN parties when they still we're not as mainstream as they became. This was the only way for me to meet more people who enjoyed IT and gaming. I'm not sure how much of what I have become and what I know came only from me or is caused by them, but I am grateful for everything they did, they are not perfect but they could have been far worse as parents.

They bought home an old 386 machine from work when I was around 6 or 7. It just attracted my curiosity... So I got it up and running by myself when I got home from school the next day, before my Dad had got home from work (with the intention of setting it up for me himself). He came in stunned to see me playing with Paint, with all the bits plugged in correctly, sprawled out across the floor. It just made sense somehow. After a week, my kitchen was covered in dot-matrix printed pictures printed on reams and reams of paper (with those funky perforated holes on the side). I used up the whole ribbon in less than 2 weeks, which was apparently naughty haha. I also used to like making letter and signs, which I helpfully placed all over the house.

The modern equivalent is leaving a Raspberry Pi out for a kid to play with, I guess. So much fun :)

I went on to study Computer Science at uni and am now a Software Engineer, aged 23 and a quarter!

Yes. Lego, computers, electronic bits and kits to make, chemistry set, things to take apart, piles of technical books plus my father was a major clone PC importer and manufacturer for over a decade and our house was literally up to the ceiling with PC parts and software.

However, with none of that I think I'd have done the same thing.

We had a lot of books, on a wide variety of topics, and I loved to read. Dad was a phone installer, Mom a secretary until my brother was born (I'm the youngest of three).

But both loved to read, and Dad had eclectic interests. Neither was particularly scientific or critical in their approach, but curiosity was prevalent.

One of my favourite books when I was very young was called "Prove It" (a quick Google search turns up all the wrong books, including theology - wha?).

It was basically science experiments that anyone with a little curiosity and the normal sorts of things one found around a house in the '60s and '70s could do. Nothing harmful, nothing risky, just a whole lot of cool.

There were pictorial encyclopaedia, "real" encyclopaedia, Popular Mechanics magazines, a whole lot....

Exposure and curiosity. Those help a lot.

When I think about it my dad did a lot.

He played chess and GO at a young age with me.

He gave me a lot of problems, and books of problems. I can remember seeing him sat for hours with a friend of his and do math problems, I would sit and try to solve them focusing on those for hours as well so I could solve them before my father (never did). I particularly remember the magic square[1] problem.

He put a computer in my room when I was 7, I had to learn how to use DOS.

He taught me how to code in BASIC on old calculators. FORTRAN/PASCAL on computer few years later.

He would also draw 3D stuff on Mathematica thanks to complex equations and I would be amazed, and ask him to do volcanoes, mountains etc...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_square

When I was very young, my dad traded a motorcycle for our family's first computer, because he recognized them as being "the future". He didn't end up learning to use it very much, but I learned just enough DOS commands to play Space Invaders. Our next computer was a 386 with Windows 3.11, and that's where I really got interested. That computer and the NES probably contributed more to getting me into IT than anything else. For a short period of time in elementary school, my parents encouraged me to get straight As with a Nintendo game each quarter - they had bought several in a garage sale or pawn shop and had them hidden. Once I got in that habit, along with the interest in the computer, my nerdy tendencies were sealed.

Programming-wise... when I was around 10 I had an old 80386 machine with MS-DOS, BASIC, Borland C++, Turbo Pascal and Windows 3.1. I learned to hack in BASIC pretty fast and made a good number of scripts and games for myself, and then I learned to optimize those since the computer was so slow, so that helped a lot.

My dad used to teach stochastic processes at the university, so he would try and explain me set theory and complex numbers when I was 5 years old (and also, play Civ 1 with me!)... eventually, I finished high school when I was 14 and college (MSc in CS and applied math) when I was 19. So I'd say my parents have done a lot in making me interested; although they've never pushed it.

My father got me a subscription for a computer magazine (finnish Mikrobitti) as a part of it you got an email account some space on their servers /~username/ and a 56k modem connection. He helped me do some fiddling around on Frontpage Express and I made websites with oh-so-cool flame gifs and 3D text banners. I had a huge stack of random 386 and 486 hardware that was brought home from flea markets and such after recession, which I used for my first Win95 "servers" (only running apache)

He was a construction worker and a taxi driver, but had an interest in technology. He's always been very supportive of my nerdy ways, even though my knowledge quickly surpassed his.

My mother comes from a Biology background and my father is self-learnt in Computer Science. Today, I am in my final year of Engineering and all this has happened because I had a strong family background in Science where I learnt every single bit of Physics and Mathematics from my father and my mother taught me every other subject until college. My major motivation to code comes from my father because he was the one who taught me C++ when I was 13.

My interest has more to do with the effort my parents put into teaching me and providing me with resources to pursue what I liked.

Also, we own an assembled PC which has undergone numerous upgrades and is still with us for over 20 years.

My father bought an Amstrad CPC to learn computing when he got in charge of supervising IT deployment in the company he worked in. I was around three by then, and they let me play a little to a game [1]. I developed a fascination to all electronic device, especially ones with screens. My father did not need the CPC for very long, and sold it. We did not have another computer at home until I was 14, not long after Internet could be reached with RTC dialups. Needless to say, I got completely hooked on this machine.

[1] probably this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Attack

They of course supported me. But the worst part was that I had to share a personal computer with 1 sister and 1 little brother. We had to take turns which slowed me down in my development.

My children will each get their own computers for sure :-)

My father was an electrical engineer. His ability to just repair/fix all manners of electronics about the house and go into depth detail about how stuff worked gave me deep insight.

We also had a ZX Spectrum 48k in the house which I learnt how to code BASIC on and read/write from tape.

The turning point for me, though, was when I wanted a SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) for Christmas and he persuaded me that I should have a Commodore Amiga instead.

So I got the Amiga 1200 and ran with it. That introduced me to more programming languages, a GUI that was pretty much replicated across the PC platform and beyond and all sorts.

No, in fact they actively discouraged me from pursuing an interest in programming.

This is a whole different perspective. May I ask, why?

Not the OP, but once upon a time, when you think of a programmer, you'd think of an underpaid, overworked slob hacking away in some dark corner of the office while the cool kids were out having fun.

Quite simply, they thought it would be too hard for me. I don't actually program for a living (yet?), although I do work in a related field where programming knowledge is useful.

So perhaps there was something to it, but I still enjoy programming so I'm going to continue with it as a hobby.

In my case, my father was intellectually absent and my mother convinced me that programming was too blue-collar. Her father had owned his own heating company and raised his kids to despise anything remotely blue-collar. My grandmother had been his administrative person, and we were raised thinking that being CPAs, lawyers, etc were 'respectable' jobs. Engineering was 'acceptable', if not 'respectable'; ironically we were discouraged from pursuing it because it would "take a lot of math" (wouldn't becoming a CPA require a lot of math also?). And we weren't allowed to take anything apart because "that would void the warranty!" (heaven forbid!). On the upshot, my mother is now an academic adviser and because I've chewed her out so many times about this subject, she advises all of her students to take every math class they can and she has no heartache recommending someone follow a blue-collar path, if that's what the student's interested in.

This is a dire contrast to most Asian parents I've encountered, who seem to think that medical and engineering are the only fields that are respectable. Everything else is a waste of time.

My dad was a science teacher, so I grew up with a mix of science knowledge thrown into my everyday existence ... including him demonstrating some of the experiments he'd do in class for me at home. In terms of IT, I've still got a vivid memory of him bringing my sister and I out to the garage where he popped open the trunk to reveal the new Apple II GS ... Woz Signature Edition. I suppose both of those influences factored into my degree in computer science, and the path I'm on today.

Yes, they told me to join business school - at this age the best to infect a teen with the tech-topic, because you will do the converse of what your parents tell you :-)

Dad tried to teach me how pointers worked when I was 6. When that didn't really stick, he tried flow diagrams. That seemed more fun than Barbies but I didn't come back to computers until 7 years later when we finally got one at home. I loved playing around with pictures and Word Art in MS Word so dad got me a "for dummies" book of sorts. It went downhill from there. :P

Yes my dad, he had to learn some programming language for chips he was using in school, so he always told me: "We will learn together, you can do all those cool things"

The time passed by, he didn't learn it and I was waiting, but as he was always telling me about programming, I got interested and I started exploring. This was my early start.

yes, my dad invested in technology in the 80's as that was the future and he and mom thought should get used to it. I remember he bought home the Commodore 64 from Germany. Besides of gaming there was always a push to look at how the machine worked etc. Reading the manual and playing with Basic and later machine code. Good times!

Nothing specifically. They pretty much let me do my own thing.

I actually got into computers when my grandfather (for his business) bought it when I was five. He bought those big yellow DOS|Windows 3.1 for Dummies books and taught me what he learnt. We used to spend hours together trying to figure out how to do stuff on it.

A few hours before their second date, my father dropped the tray containing his final project in statistical programming down a stairwell. My mother stayed up all night helping him sort and resort all of the punch cards and get everything back into order. They have been married for 38 years.

Not really.

They were fine having video games around, so I guess gaming got me more into computers (navigating a dos interface always made me feel special). We had a major traffic accident that gave my cat a tumor and made me want to be a vet, so that might also count.

I used to copy the code out of Commodore 64 magazines with my Dad to make games.

He also used to wake me in the middle of the night when there was an eclipse on so that we could watch it.

We went to Sellfield visitors centre, museums, mines, etc.

My dad introduced me to HTML through a program called hotdog pro when I was a kid. He's a professor and was using it to make class websites. Since he was an early adopter of new technology, that rubbed off on me.

They bought my sister and I a Commodore Vic 20 in about 1982. A fairly serious expense for them back then. I don't remember her using it at all, but I did and I owe my career as a developer to their generosity.

My dad brought me a book from a library when i was 8 years old:related to astronomy. Also, i found some old geography boojs around that time which made me develop interest in world geography maps!

My mum was a maths teacher and had been around computers since she had a job punching paper tape in the 1950s. I started programming on a programmable calculator, and we got a BBC micro later.

Well, my dad was a chemist... so, yeah. We did science museums and such a lot. Plus we'd watch a lot of the Discovery channel back when it was more science and less reality t.v.

My dad paid for school and told me I was on my own after. I switched majors from Art History to Computer Science. So yes.

Not kidding. Glad I did.

Beside bought me a computer, they did nothing. I found my fascination of computer science by tinkering myself.

Yup, they bought a BBC Micro in 1983. Playing around with that was what got me started.

Yes, they did a lot. Even if they were both Literature and History teachers :)

They bought a Windows 3.11, that's where it started for me :).

My father gave me as a present an Amiga 500 :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com