Growing Up with a Keyboard and Croissants: Lessons from My Father’s Dual World
When people ask me to describe my childhood, I often joke that I was raised by two powerful forces: binary code and baguettes. My father, a French computer scientist (mon père est un informaticien), wove together the logic of algorithms and the warmth of European traditions in a way that shaped my worldview. His career wasn’t just a job—it was a lens through which I learned to see technology, education, and even life itself.
The Early Days: Playtime with Pixels
Before I could read, I could recognize the hum of a computer fan. My father’s home office was a magical cave of blinking lights, tangled cables, and stacks of French engineering journals. While other kids built forts with pillows, I built imaginary servers with cardboard boxes. He’d sit me on his lap during coding sessions, explaining in simple terms how lines of text could solve problems. “See this?” he’d say, pointing at a Python script. “It’s like a recipe. If you follow the steps just right, you get something delicious.”
Those moments taught me that technology wasn’t intimidating—it was creative. My father’s passion demystified computers long before I touched a school keyboard. By age eight, I’d learned to troubleshoot our Wi-Fi router (a skill that made me the “tech hero” of family Zoom calls decades later).
The Bilingual Brain: Coding and Café au Lait
Growing up bilingual added a unique layer to my tech education. My father spoke to me in French at home, reserving English for discussions about his work. This wasn’t just about language; it was about cultural perspective. In French, he’d share stories of le Minitel, France’s early internet precursor. In English, we debated Silicon Valley innovations. The contrast taught me that technology isn’t universal—it’s shaped by the cultures that create it.
One summer, he designed a simple programming game for me. The instructions were in French (“Déplace le robot vers la sortie!”), but the logic gates were pure Python. Solving those puzzles felt like bridging two worlds: the romantic language of Molière and the precise syntax of computer science.
When the Printer Cried: Embracing Failure
Not every lesson went smoothly. I’ll never forget the time I accidentally overwrote his research backup drive. Panicking, I confessed through tears. Instead of anger, he laughed. “C’est la vie,” he shrugged. “Now we’ll fix it together.” For three hours, we disassembled the drive, attempting data recovery with tools he’d coded himself. We failed—the files were lost—but the experience became a parable about resilience.
He often said, “A good programmer isn’t someone who never breaks things. It’s someone who knows how to unbreak them.” This philosophy spilled beyond tech. When I struggled with math or friendship conflicts, he’d ask, “What’s the bug here? Let’s debug it step by step.”
The Human Algorithm: Balancing Tech and Touch
Despite his love for machines, my father fiercely protected “unplugged” time. Saturday mornings were for fresh croissants and chess, not screens. He’d quote French philosopher Bernard Stiegler: “Technology is a pharmakon—both poison and remedy. It’s our job to decide the dose.”
This balance shaped my approach to learning. While my peers saw tech as either “good” (video games) or “bad” (homework), I learned to view it as a paintbrush. We used spreadsheets to track lemonade stand profits, edited vacation videos with open-source software, and even programmed LED lights for school theater productions. Technology wasn’t a separate subject—it was a tool for bringing ideas to life.
The Gift of Pourquoi: Questioning Everything
French parenting leans heavily on teaching children to argue (discuter), and my father applied this to STEM. When I asked how computers worked, he never gave textbook answers. Instead, he’d counter with “Pourquoi penses-tu cela?” (“Why do you think that?”). Our kitchen table became a lab for testing hypotheses about everything from Wi-Fi signals to why toast lands butter-side down (a mystery we “solved” using slow-motion phone videos).
This habit of inquiry became my superpower. In school, while classmates memorized formulas, I chased the “why” behind them. Thanks to my father, I knew that understanding principles—not just facts—was the key to solving real-world problems.
Legacy in Lines of Code and Loaves of Bread
Today, as I study machine learning (and bake pain au chocolat to de-stress), I see how my father’s dual legacy guides me. His work taught me to love problem-solving; his French heritage taught me to savor the process. Where some see cold logic in programming, I see the rhythm of a sonnet. Debugging a stubborn error feels no different from perfecting a soufflé—both require patience, precision, and a dash of creativity.
To those navigating parenting in the digital age, his example offers a blueprint:
1. Make technology tangible. Kids interact better with concepts they can touch, whether it’s old motherboards or breadboard circuits.
2. Celebrate the ‘glitch’. Mistakes aren’t disasters—they’re invitations to innovate.
3. Protect the human spark. No algorithm can replace curiosity, empathy, or the smell of freshly baked bread.
In merging Silicon Valley pragmatism with Parisian joie de vivre, my father showed me that the future isn’t about choosing between tech and humanity. It’s about writing the code—and living the life—that connects them.
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