Anastasia Calls Coding a ‘Mind-Stretcher!’

This week’s Featured Maker is a budding programmer and author who told us, “I looooove pineapples!” Ten-year-old Anastasia hails from Australia; she’s in 4th grade and enjoys netball, karate, and, of course, coding! After she was introduced to Tynker at school, she was hooked on coding and continued teaching herself.

Anastasia has created some fantastic projects (and continues to do so!), so we chatted with her to learn a little more about her and why she loves to code!

How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was screaming!

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be an author because I love books! So far, my favorite is either Harry Potter or Goosebumps.

What’s your favorite subject in school? Writing!

How did you get introduced to Tynker? A person from the Grade 5 class came over and introduced us to it, and we’ve been using it ever since. In other coding apps, everything seems really different and it’s not easy to find blocks, and all the blocks are harder to understand.

How did you learn how to use Tynker? I learned on my own. I’ve been building my Tynker vocab!

Why do you like to code? I just like to code because I like to see how things work and what I can do with it!

How do creativity and coding fit together for you? Creativity works with coding because you get to see what you can do and what you can make!

How do you get inspiration for your projects? I just like to be weird! It just suits me. I’m the craziest kid in my class, believe it or not!

Weirdo Quiz

What are you planning to make next? Weirdo Quiz 2! It’s going to be a prison escape.

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? Probably Kaleido. I love that one. It’s kind of like a kaleidoscope! You hold your finger on the screen and a little dot will follow you and there’s like 7 other dots and those all do it too. They make the same movement but not in the same place. It leaves trails of different colors.

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? I try and debug it, and if it has anything wrong with it I go to the exact place in the code where it bugged up, and figure out how to fix it! I only publish some of them because some of them are just plain old weird.

Brick Breaker 1

What’s your favorite feature in Tynker? I like that you’re able to do fun little games that help you learn how to code!

How do you think learning coding now will help you in the future? The future is getting more into technology, so I think it would help to know how to program machines. If you can’t code, you can’t program robots, or create mechanical arms, or something like that.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yeah! It really is a mind-stretcher, plus it’s really relaxing because you get to just sit there, placing blocks.

What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker? I’d recommend that they ask someone who knows Tynker. If they don’t have anyone who knows Tynker, they should try using one of the tutorials or playing a game.

Anastasia’s mom Zoe doesn’t have computer science experience herself; however, she told us that because she built computers 20 years ago, it’s exciting to see her daughter programming them now! In her words, “I’m very, very proud of her! I was quite surprised when she showed me these things she was doing, I was like, ‘Far out! I wouldn’t have the first clue how to do something like that!’”

Zoe noted that because Anastasia is “really, really smart – she’s definitely top of her class in a lot of subjects,” it didn’t really surprise her that she gravitated to coding.

Thanks for chatting with us, Anastasia and Zoe! We’ll be on the lookout for Prison Escape – if it’s anything like the rest of your projects, it’ll be fantastic. Happy coding!