Sometimes it's difficult to define programming to people. Especially too old or too young people can not understand what I do to earn money. They think that I repair computers, or they want to think that I (as an engineer) build computers at work. :) It's really hard to tell people that you produce something they can't touch.
Here is a funny question, how would you explain your job to a 5-year-old?
You make computer games. Sure, they might be really boring games, but it's the closest thing they can relate to! Or you make web sites.
I like to tell kids that I invent computer programs. They always ask "what did you invent so far?"
Computers are machines that can do all kinds of interesting things... but only if you know how to speak their language.
I talk to computers in their language, and I tell them what I'd like them to do. And if I've told them how to it right, they do it! :)
I tell me daughter, she's six, that "I fix computers", which isn't far wrong because I seem to spend most of my time fixing bugs these days.
I told my kids I make software, which I equated with "things you do on the computer, like Google Earth". They love Google Earth, so this clicked.
So...the eldest one (8) told her teacher "my dad made Google Earth", which they were suitably impressed by.
Not looking forward to next parents evening...
I told my 5-year-old daughter that computers are high-speed idiots that need to be told what to do by low-speed idiots. I'm one of those low-speed idiots :-)
"I write Silverlight apps that utilise WCF Webservices that interface to a SQL Server database. I wont patronise you by attempting to simplify it because I know your skills already surpass mine"
Kids these days...
When I was a kid, I thought tiny men make the TV work.
So I can say : "I feed tiny blue men that live in computers."
"I put food on the table, now go shovel the driveway and get a job"
I use metaphors like constructing buildings, gardening, cars driving on motorhighways, etc. whatever fits the current thing I explain. Fruits are brilliant to explain how operating-systems are layered.
problem with this is - people often loose track on what you really are doing. so mostly I just tell them and then I explain it constructing a metaphor using their field of work. Since old-people often used to work in any craftsmanship or know how such things work - and even little children can imagine how a house is built (in general).
It's a problem - explaining what you're doing - in any conversation, since it's often so abstract that the communication-partner can't really understand all the implications and oneself is too stuck to talk about anything else ;)
My five year old is into secret codes, after learning about them from his seven year old neighbor, and he has recognized the word "code" on some of my computer books. So I told him I write special codes that tell computers what to do.
"Well, most of the time I'm making the computer show pretty colors! Well actually it's just one color. It's a big, ehm... pretty blue screen with a lot of little white letters and numbers. Nobody knows what they mean, nobody. And then, after the pretty blue screen, the computer goes to sleep."
The janitor of the computer world. I clean up everyone else messes .....
My 2.5 yr old is happy with "Daddy goes on a train to work". Trains are even better than trucks/diggers.
Although I worry that by the time he's five, he will think I drive the train.
Could say something like i'm a typist only difference is i can type whatever the hell i want!! and get paid for it! lol!
Or, how does a five year old describe your job? My 3 year old says:
"Mummy works in a big building."
"Daddy plays in his study."
I guess that is close enough for now!
"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be."
F. Brooks
For a child you can say the same thing with different words: "With computer you can do all you can imagine, including creating robots, create music, manipulate objects... The only thing which limits you is what you know, so learn, learn, learn".