How do you explain to your family exactly what a programmer does all day? Like they think our job is no big deal sometimes...

@M1sf3t I agree, you don't. Trying to explain in simple terms just leads to more misunderstandings. Soon, you will find yourself bombarded with requests that are so far away from your area of knowledge, that you will find yourself wondering "How the hell do you expect me to know/do/make that?!"

Don't make it simple. Just say it as it is. Keep making it *gradually* simpler, but only if they ask specifically.

I find this the best approach for filtering out the people that don't actually care what you do early on, and engaging with those who are genuinely interested.

You write a book...

You take a phrase from some random page and some random book in the big library and put it in your book.

After that you check using computer if this book you’re writing makes sense.

Unfortunately you can’t check every word cause it’s impossible so you just check this page and assume it’s fine.

If it is ok you can sometimes display something, but grammar might be not great so program will crash.

Some plot on page 2987 might not make sense after change but you don’t know it yet cause nobody never red page 2987 of this book.

The more books, pages and phrases you know and how to connect them the better programmer you are.

Plot on page 666 kills all people so everyone is omitting it.

No big deal? My family thinks I can bend spacetime or some shit. I'm like "MOM, IT'S ONLY BUILDING SYSTEMS OF COMPLEX INTERACTIONS OUT OF CONCEPTS AND ABSTRACTIONS AND PUTTING THOSE INTO WORDS THAT A COMPUTER CAN UNDERSTAND, OK???".

Man.

I show them the code and they immediately shut the fuck up as I watch their eye lids raise in confusion and mass conflict.

Cousins: “So you like...work for SpaceX or something?”.
Me: “Yeah, sure, we can go with that.

I live-coded for a couple of hours to show my family what I do. Every single time before I typed something I explained it and after some time I asked questions like "what should I write here" and got right answers. They were suprised coding is not magical.

Just tell them that you help build applications like <insert applications familiar to your family>. Nothing more, nothing less.

As them if they think PornHub just spontaneously came into existence.

"No? That's right. People like me make that happen. You're welcome."

You can’t or my parents wouldn’t think I’m wasting my life