A programmer's dad

My son, 8 years, loves technology. His first word was not "Mama" or "Papa", but "Licht" (light) pointing to various blinking lights again and again. He later went on to get to know Alexa and Google Home, and he wanted me to buy it for him. I said "no", but his inspiration made him persistent. In the end, he had saved enough pocket money to pay for it. He asked me if I would order it for him, and I said "no", but he kept persistent and defeated me with his argument that it was his money. 

Once Alexa arrived, he was enthusiastic. With barely 7 years, just having learned to read, he could not follow the install instructions, but he made me do it. "What do we want to play" was always answered by "let's set up Alexa". Now as of today, in his bed, I can command Alexa to turn off the lights which I can't do in my bed.

Then he asked me if I can analyze pictures from his webcam and write a program to count how many faces are on it. His usecase (he is, as said, 8 years old) was to realize if burglars got into our house. However I said "no", I cannot analyze pictures, I have no knowledge about jpg or png or pixels or whatever. But then I thought, wait, I have done this Google Architect Certification... and then I got Cloud Vision API to analyze the pictures for us. Now we wrote a program that can count the faces on pictures, and even analyze if the burglars have a surprised or joyful expression in their faces ;)

You see what's possible if you have inspiration. I am not saying he can do programming, and I am not saying he set up these devices. He did something much better which will help him in his later life: He took leadership and convinced "colleagues" who knew how to do it. He connected the dots to accomplish a technical task.

If he calls this "programming", I am fine with it.