I'm just joining this field, and already I hate it when family ask what exactly I'm learning.
I can either dumb it down to the old "I make computer go beep beep" and get met with accusations of rudeness, tell the full details and have them look lost, or try and dumb it down and get met with patronizing remarks ("Oh yeah, I remember doing that last Thrusday! Sure, yeah!).
How do you explain this shit to your folks?

explain them with love and respect, being the less technical possible.

like a time I explain them how a project did its shit when I was working on it, slowly, with a general explanation. that was the case just explaining a project, but hell explaining something more wide like you do in general is not that hard

@JhonDoe I think the issue comes in generalizing it, perhaps I go too broad... I've been polite most of the times I get asked, but I've gotten as low as "I write the commands that make computers do things" and it still doesn't entirely click. I think they don't understand how what I write makes the computer do things, but I can't explain that well enough for them to understand it.

@jysk131 well a real case example can help too. whenever I say to a non-developer that I work at backend I say: I do backend development, backend let's just say it's the programing of the server side of things(and then I always say this example), think about the login of any of your mobile apps, when you put your email and password, that makes an operation against a backend server, I kinda do that type of progamming; how the backend check if you are a valid user and so on

@jysk131 also how about explaining... if you are a dba or a sysadmin: I make sure the servers that runs all type of services(like databases, image storage and son on) don't fall over night, or at time that many users are up.

I hope nobody hate me for these very off descriptions.

I've gotten to the point that I don't dumb it down. I just start talking until their eyes glaze over, which is only a few seconds, and then I know I'm done, and we can move on. Still get asked to make printers print and scanners scan and routers rout, though. Because DBA means sorcerer. Bleh.

@JhonDoe Alright. I'll try doing that next time. Thanks for the advice!

I'm just going with "I can make computer go beep beep"

I usually focus on describing products that I'm working on and briefly how I contribute to those.

Imagine you talking to surgeon or sth like that and asking what he/she does - do you really want to hear all those medical terms that you have no clue about or just some stories about patients he/she helped and briefly how?

If you cant explain it simply you dont understand it well enough