Bringing CHANGE!
Date: 03-05-2020
I have started teaching my wife and my sister-in-law about computers and programming. In this lockdown state, partly due to their eagerness to learn and partly due to their need of getting a job, I have started giving training sessions. Both are almost zero experience with computers and no familiarity with English, so all in all it is a big challenge, since most of the courses available on internet are in English.
I asked them to read a couple of pages of books that I shared with them, to bring some sense of English language, so that their grasping improved. Also, I am giving examples which they can relate to themselves. Since both of them are homemakers, I often quote examples from restaurants and kitchen and making dishes. Like yesterday, I made them understood about different level of memories and processor speed, by taking an analogy from creating a dish in the house. You need to put cut/washed vegetables on kitchen table, storing large quantities in store/fridge. This is the same way, cache memory, RAM and Hard-drives functions. I explained them about input-output unit and a bit about CPU.
Day before yesterday I made them understand about a basic IT company working and Software company working. What is meant by a server, or a client or a database. I explained why saving a database is utmost important to any company. I also demonstrated them, how we can launch a website on AWS cloud computing platform in no time.
The way I am thinking here is, I want to show them intricacies, but I also want to make them comfortable and prove them that these things are easy to learn with little devotion of time and efforts.
I will take an approach of cloud computing way, because it is comparatively easy to learn and easy to demonstrate and seeing their knowledge coming into action immediately is even more fun.
My own journey from a Molecular biology Ph.D. dropout to becoming a DevOps engineer on cloud computing platform like AWS was quite demanding and it is still demanding, since I still see myself not getting used to some of the typical Compter Science phenomenon. I am learning and spending a lot of time redoing and re-visiting basics. To be an expert the subject must flow in your blood, you should directly understand the language of the field.
I also explained level of computer programming to my new students:
A) Machine Language: The binary language that a machine can directly understant, without any intermediary help.
B) Assembly language: The chip specific language, which need Assembler help to get translated to machine language.
C) Low Level languages: The language like C, which needs compiler, and a bit more human friendly in terms of its coding syntax.
D) High Level Languages: Languages like Python, R, which needs interpreter to be able to get executed on any computer, but they are damn simple in their syntax, almost like writing English language.
I explained why Machine language is fastest among these four categories and interpreted lanuage like Python is slow, because if you want to go for shopping, you can easily bargain from a person who understand your language. The smaller number of translators of language have been used in between, the quicker execution we can see and vice versa.
At the end we did a couple of freecodecamp exercises, again due to simplicity of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), and it is free (Thank you! Freecodecamp). The joy of you making a computer (browser in this case) doing something as per your instruction is price-less.
I am no genius in this stuff, in fact I am just a little more knowledgeable then both, but I am trying to bring change, and I believe goodness always starts from you and your family. If we able to continue this long enough, then it would be great. Long enough to make these ladies, capable enough to get a job in highly competitive IT/Software Industry, that’s the final goal.
Yash