Introduction to software developer profession for teens

[Florian Snow]

Hi,


Carmen Bianca Bakker <carmenbianca at fsfe.org> writes:
> - You do not need to be good at maths to be a decent software
>   engineer.

Thank you for pointing that out.  I completely forgot about that.  I
always play this little game with students where I ask them which
subject they think is the most important to become a programmer and they
usually think it is math.  They are often very surprised when I tell
them it is English and a little bit of logic.


> The first should hopefully scare off gamers who would have a miserable
> time doing software engineering.

I am always very carful in scaring people.  I completely understand what
you mean and I don't disagree with your general idea, but there are
plenty of people who got into coding because of games and have a lot of
fun.  But on a similar note:  No matter which profession people are
interested in, I usually recommend doing multiple internships to find
out what suits you best.  Even if it takes a whole year of doing nothing
but different internships, it is worthwhile because starting something
and then realizing halfway through it is not the right thing, takes much
more time than some internships.

I sometimes even go so far as to tell them that if an intern leaves
after an internship and knows they never want to touch a computer again,
I see that as a success (unless it is because my mentoring was so
terrible) because it means someone knows one field they are _not_
interested in.

Happy hacking!
Florian