Sarah Codes to Prepare for the Future!

Nine-year-old Sarah is a dedicated student and programmer who’s looking toward the future! Her father told us she’s won various academic awards during her 4th grade year. After school she likes to head to her home in Perth, Australia, and “start coding, but sometimes I like drawing and sketching.” When we spoke with her, we learned a lot about why she likes to code – and why she codes in the first place!

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a technician and also someone who codes games.

What’s your favorite subject in school? We don’t do much coding, but I like a lot of math and especially art.

Why do you like to code? I’m kind of copying what my dad does – he’s good with technology so I thought I’d try and be the same.

How do you get inspiration for your projects? I don’t really know! Sometimes something just pops into my head, something that I like!

What are you planning to make next? I am trying to make an onscreen keyboard – making it so you can type something. I thought I’d challenge myself a bit.

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? Probably “Builder Blocks.” It’s kind of like Minecraft but it’s not good to copy other people’s things so I decided to change it up a bit and make it my own!

“Builder Blocks”

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? Most of the time I show it to Dad because he’s very strict with making sure it’s 100% before I publish it – I try to publish things that are the best, to make sure I’ve done the best I can do before I publish it.

How did you get introduced to Tynker? We did a little bit of coding on a different program at school and I thought it was really interesting. I came home and looked for Tynker, and it looked like one that stood out, so I asked dad if I could get it and we did!

How did you learn how to use Tynker? I started very simple and then I kind of taught myself. Even though my daddy’s very good with technology he’s not so good with block coding (he’s better with that typing coding) so I just worked it out myself.

“Nail Salon”

What’s your favorite feature in Tynker? It just allows you to do anything you can think of! It’s almost impossible to not create something.

Do you look at the Tynker community projects? Yes, I do find some quite interesting! I do think that some of them are really great, and even better than some of mine!

How do you think learning coding now will help you in the future? Well, I think that in the future everyone’s going to be into technology and we’re going to need people who know what they’re doing.

“Drawing Pro”

Do you think other kids should try coding? Definitely! I think they need to set themselves up for the future; I think it’s going to be really different.

What advice would you give for kids starting out with Tynker? Start with the basics! When you get comfortable, get a little bit harder and a little bit harder. Hard things might be easy for some people but they might be really difficult, so just try to keep at your own pace.

Sarah’s dad Mason is an experienced coder himself, and is excited Sarah is learning to code! He told us, “I’ve been doing internet or coding since Windows 3.1. I used to write HTML web pages by hand, but all I’ve done is open Sarah up to the knowledge base.” As for Sarah’s budding coding skills, he’s “all for it.” Mason continued with, “I support it 100% because that is the way of the future. When I go online now, jobs are always looking for someone who can code.”

He’s proud Sarah is coding and preparing for the future, but he believes she’s mostly alone in the endeavor. “Sarah’s the only one of 26 in her class doing coding. Even the teacher, even though they’re meant to be up to speed on it, asks Sarah, ‘How do you do this?’”

We agree with Mason and Sarah – coding is important to the future, and we hope more people make it a part of their lives! Sarah, we look forward to seeing what you come up with next. Happy coding!