I've been working as an independent software developer for a long time now and have worked on many languages and platforms, such as PHP, Python, Javascript, and others. I have two children (girls) with age 14 and 10. They both are avid readers and like to learn new things. Since I am a programmer, I introduced them to programming and they picked up well. This includes things like Scratch, Javascript, Python. My elder one also learned to make projects with Arduino and the younger one is exploring Microbit. The elder one also likes art and design and has been learning Adobe Illustrator.
As we all know the tech scene keeps evolving with new technology and platforms launching every few months. I've been reading about the growth of Kotlin, Dart, the rise of Flutter for cross-platform development, growth in AI, and so on.
My question is if my kids want to be in the technology industry, what skills (tech or non-tech) should they build that will provide them a competitive advantage over their peers when they join college and enter the industry afterward?
As you wrote, techs come and go. And will only really help them if they use them (and, to a much smaller extent, to gain more context to understand the other tech they might use in the future)
On the other hand, some skills are always very helpful (especially in our domain, but are also in other domains) and will probably continue to be very helpful for a very long while:
Exploring (any) tech tools, while keeping a focus on this will probably help them a lot over time!
(Another one could sound obvious: «common sense». I am amazed on a daily basis by how many people lack this :D I know I might sound like a troll.... but people how are pragmatic and have good common sense are so much better teammates than the other ones :D
Disclaimer: I don’t have any children, so this is just an opinion based on the desired outcome after a few years, but I guess things are probably very different on a daily basis ;-)
Hey Manish! Your post reminds me when I was that age starting out programming in HTML and CSS! It's good that they're so interested in python and those languages. It really depends on what kind of role they seek to be honest and they might know at this age.
I wanted to be a designer and a developer, and now i'm a full stack developer which has been something interesting because it gives me the flexibility to jump between technologies, always love learning something new and try out all the latest software between programming and art and design.
I would honestly say, as much as it would make you proud to send your daughters to college if they want to programme, I would say don't because a lot of developers are self taught and this is over-riding the complete education system for programming. The other thing is, they will also be out of date in their chosen language by the time they come out as the tech market is increasing moving too fast that no one can stay up to date.
If they want to just hold the legal certifications for programming then they could do this from home at a cost. If your older ones interested in art and design then certainly be worth sending her to college then she could hold the relevant qualifications in that area, and it will give her more of an insight into digital graphics which will lead to more adobe software but more in the university area (bare in mind the cost), it would be cheaper do just get the software your self, keep at it for a few years and she would walk out probably better and no uni costs!
Now the industry, I can tell you for women, it's a lot harder to get into the industry because we're doubted by fellow men unfortunately. I have had to push my way through this industry, I remember sitting in college classes, 3 women out of 30 men... But providing they have the confidence in their selected area they will knock them all down one by one ha! (might take awhile but certainly does happen!)
I aced my level 2 college course, and on two attempts I dropped my level 3 course, because the programming languages offered at the time were only available at university and so I grew easily bored and thought I would get better working experience in which I did. Still don't regret it!
I would recommend looking at the yearly tech stacks if they're interested, at the moment Python is trying to dominate Node JS and probably will because pythons more elastic and has the room to grow, but then you have other bits like react which is Front-end developing which is okay but I've heard the front-end developing market is going and a lot of developers from front-end are going to back-end to stay in that market.
I have a daughter which will be 4 in December and i'm hoping to get her straight into Scratch and Python and shes also got quite a creative flare for painting and drawing. I'm not sure where the future holds but if she wanted to do programming I would let her self teach her self as I do because these developers often come out a lot more stronger in the long run.
If your daughters can already start putting bits together at this age, try and build up a portfolio and by the time they want to enter the market, this would stand out but they do need to be unique.
Hope that helps and its wonderful truly to see that you're letting them get into programming, I do know women are thriving now in the software/web engineering industry and the market is changing so who knows what the future holds :)
keep us posted as would love to hear more how it turns out x
They're years away from job searching, so it's not worth worrying about micro trends (although the macro trend to AI is probably something to watch). Plus if they plan to study CS/IT at college, that should mean they don't have to learn everything on their own :)
For now though... They should probably just be tinkering with whatever they enjoy. Fostering a love of coding, sense of curiosity and confidence they can learn whatever they want is probably going to have more impact in the long term. eg. if they understand the fundamental patterns of coding are separate from any specific language or project, they'll know their core knowledge is there to help them pick up new things when they need to.
If and when they do study CS/IT at college, that's probably the time to start considering complementary skills like testing/QA, deployment, time management, stakeholder management, communication and presentation skills. But they don't strike me as fun weekend projects for a 10 and 14yo :) Hence saying it's probably better to just keep it fun.
Jacob Cavazos (Jake)
Development Operations Engineer & Cloud Architect
Over the past few years I have found inspiration in Michael Hartl’s view on technical sophistication being the new literacy. He created learn enough which I use as a reference for my friends who ask me about what skills they should learn and how.