A number of cities have "open house" weekends where public and private buildings and infrastructure that is generally closed off is temporarily made open to the public. I've always hoped that these weekends would be expanded to include both manufacturing facilities and many of the utilities that are essential to our lives. I've been fortunate enough to have visited some of these facilities (as an adult) and have both always learned something and gained a greater appreciation of the role technology (non-IT) plays in our lives. In short, practical site visits are a fantastic idea that I'm sure my younger self would have enjoyed tremendously.
Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
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Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#12Yes, they are fun as adults as well. The Toyota plant in Guelph in Ontario is a good one and Amazon fulfilment centres do them in some locations and are quite fun as well.
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#13I think it's good. I got a chance to shadow a surgeon and watch some surgeries. I thought the field was interesting, but I was bored out of my mind, during some of the most 'interesting' surgeries. If I didn't know that, I might have wasted a lot of time. (I'm not saying it's boring in general, but this was my opinion, meaning I'm unsuited for it)
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#14[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#15Local and university chapters of the American Nuclear Society sometimes organize tours of nuclear power plants in their respective regions. I went on a few of these tours in college and it was truly a unique experience. It's easy to talk about a gigawatt of power, but to actually feel it screaming past you in the turbine hall really opens your eyes to the immense scale of the electrical infrastructure we've built to power our civilization.
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#16Slightly off-topic: I didn't have the opportunity to visit industrial sites when I was a kid, so I made it up to myself by watching lots of "THE MAKING"[1] as an adult.
[1]: "THE MAKING" is the Japanese equivalent of "How It's Made." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps_X1TqiJZQ&list=PLOEDIkStOh...
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#17I think it's good. I got a chance to shadow a surgeon and watch some surgeries. I thought the field was interesting, but I was bored out of my mind, during some of the most 'interesting' surgeries. If I didn't know that, I might have wasted a lot of time. (I'm not saying it's boring in general, but this was my opinion, meaning I'm unsuited for it)
When ya think about it, what is a body but a pile of unmaintained code made by two drunken people a few decades ago, using a framework with a few million years of tech debt?
Everyone wants to do the upfront coding, but nobody likes maintaining it afterward...
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#18I think it's good. I got a chance to shadow a surgeon and watch some surgeries. I thought the field was interesting, but I was bored out of my mind, during some of the most 'interesting' surgeries. If I didn't know that, I might have wasted a lot of time. (I'm not saying it's boring in general, but this was my opinion, meaning I'm unsuited for it)
When ya think about it, what is a body but a pile of unmaintained code made by two drunken people a few decades ago, using a framework with a few million years of tech debt? Everyone wants to do the upfront coding, but nobody likes maintaining it afterward...
Commented out code, self modifying code, overlapping code, copy pasted code, code integrated from other species, even code integrated from malware. Execution of fragments requires solving quantum mechanics for large particles and in practice is done by random changes followed up by measurement of the result. Execution of the entire thing past a few initial bootloader steps has never been achieved in vitro, let alone in a controllable simulation with something that resembles a debugger.
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#19When I was a kid my dad took me to his work a couple of times at the nuclear plant. I remember a little the visitor center and also I think where they did training. So I have a vague memory of being able to pick up and move around pipes simulating fuel using a remote camera system to do the online refueling of the reactor which was new around that time.
I have no idea the exact impact, but I would suspect that these types of experiences are important to build intellectual curiosity.
Re: Ask HN: In person industry tours and site visits?
#20Yes, practical exposure to any industry - particularly ones the teenager has an interest in - is a great thing.
I went to what was called a “vocational” high school in the US. In schools like this you rotate between a week of academic class and a week of your chosen specialization. Every week for four years. I was in the “graphic design and publishing” shop so I was learning Photoshop, Illustrator and running offset lithographic printers (small ones lol) with actual industry vets. Other students had auto body, facilities management, electrical, cosmetology, nursing. Freshman year is called your “exploratory” year, where you select something like ~8 of the available trades the school has on offer, with the end goal being you try them and figure out which to commit to. I remember going through Culinary Arts and nearly spilling a bowl of hot soup all over a table of elderly people. That line of work was never in the cards for me.
I’m not in graphic design anymore and “desktop publishing” barely exists as it did then, but the path certainly lead me to where I am today. I have NO clue what I’d be doing without that education.