I'm not sure why you feel your family is conservative. Remember: these political terms have very fluid definitions. If you stuck a gun to my head, I might define "conservative" as "folks who don't want to change anything because it works good enough already" while liberal would be "folks who want to change things that aren't broken" That's just a SWAG, though. I'm sure all my conservative and liberal friends would disagree!
So I know a lot of conservatives who do open source, who do all sorts of new things -- after they've been around for a few years. I guess die-hard conservatives might wait 50 years or so before trying new stuff? Usually these guys aren't in IT, though. You have to remember that in IT something like 80% of what we use refreshes every couple of years.
I had a very similar problem with my parents who were very liberal! To them there were established ways of trying new things. It wasn't an issue of trying new stuff. It was that they had a different mental model of reality than what I was experiencing. It took a long time before they finally figured out what I was telling them.
There are a lot of conservative people who teach interpretive dance, improvisational acting, or creative writing. Likewise, there are a lot of liberal people who are lifers at various BigCorps, are lawyers for the man, and so on. Don't confuse the comic book definition of things with how things actually work.
So the problem here is, at least from your brief description, is not that your family doesn't want you doing new-fangled stuff. It might be that they don't understand how the technology field works. It also might be that somebody is paying for college and you're spending your time chasing stuff that doesn't look like college to them. Could be a lot of things, actually. I think more information is needed.
It's one thing to want to freeform chase your dreams. It's another thing to commit to a structured regimen of training. Sounds like your family is expecting one thing from you and you want to do another. As long as they aren't writing the checks and you're not making a mistake by going in debt for something you're not using, sounds to me like you get to decide. Time for an honest talk.
Also, and this is tricky for tech folks, you just may never be able to convey what the tech world looks like to them. IBM lifers have a much different view of tech than SV types. (Each tends to disdain the other, but that's a story for another day)
Buck up, kid! If you want to spend your evenings building free software to change the world, go for it. But that means you have a communication job ahead with the family -- one that might take many years to accomplish.
So I know a lot of conservatives who do open source, who do all sorts of new things -- after they've been around for a few years. I guess die-hard conservatives might wait 50 years or so before trying new stuff? Usually these guys aren't in IT, though. You have to remember that in IT something like 80% of what we use refreshes every couple of years.
I had a very similar problem with my parents who were very liberal! To them there were established ways of trying new things. It wasn't an issue of trying new stuff. It was that they had a different mental model of reality than what I was experiencing. It took a long time before they finally figured out what I was telling them.
There are a lot of conservative people who teach interpretive dance, improvisational acting, or creative writing. Likewise, there are a lot of liberal people who are lifers at various BigCorps, are lawyers for the man, and so on. Don't confuse the comic book definition of things with how things actually work.
So the problem here is, at least from your brief description, is not that your family doesn't want you doing new-fangled stuff. It might be that they don't understand how the technology field works. It also might be that somebody is paying for college and you're spending your time chasing stuff that doesn't look like college to them. Could be a lot of things, actually. I think more information is needed.
It's one thing to want to freeform chase your dreams. It's another thing to commit to a structured regimen of training. Sounds like your family is expecting one thing from you and you want to do another. As long as they aren't writing the checks and you're not making a mistake by going in debt for something you're not using, sounds to me like you get to decide. Time for an honest talk.
Also, and this is tricky for tech folks, you just may never be able to convey what the tech world looks like to them. IBM lifers have a much different view of tech than SV types. (Each tends to disdain the other, but that's a story for another day)
Buck up, kid! If you want to spend your evenings building free software to change the world, go for it. But that means you have a communication job ahead with the family -- one that might take many years to accomplish.