Creator Toby Explores the Tynker Community with His Friends!

Featured Maker Toby is a 5th grader from Flora, Indiana. He’s eleven years old and loves to read and play soccer. We loved his game “The Sneaky Spy” – it’s really creative and fun to play! We were curious to learn where Toby gets his ideas and why he loves to code, so we chatted with him to find out!

What’s your favorite subject in school? Math. I really like doing fractions.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A video game designer.

How did you get introduced to Tynker? My science teacher showed it to us a couple months ago. We had to complete the crash course, but I wanted to do a little bit more.

How did you figure out how to code with Tynker? I looked up other projects and saw how they did it. I just took that and made it my own, I guess.

What is your favorite thing you’ve made? I just started a couple months ago, so probably the The Sneaky Spy.

Do you look at the Tynker community projects? Yeah, my friends and I always do tests to see who can beat the games the fastest.

What’s your favorite feature in Tynker? Probably the featured projects in the community. I like playing the games and seeing how cool they are.

What are you planning to make next? There’s an Idle game called Construction Clicker, but a clicker was never put in, so I’m trying to make something like that.

Why do you like to code? I guess practice for when I grow up. I want to try to become a video game designer.

What do you think coding will allow you to do in your life? It’ll help me with my job! I want to work with a company called Mojang. I’d like to work with them to make new things for Minecraft.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yeah – it’s fun and it’s really cool to do!

What advice would you give for kids starting out with Tynker? Just try hard and maybe you’ll succeed.

We also spoke with Aimee, Toby’s mom, who thinks it’s great that Toby is learning to code. When asked what benefits she thinks coding has for kids, she said, “It seems like this generation loves computers, so if they can do things that incorporate technology, science, and math, I think it’s good.”

We agree – coding is a way kids can use computers in a productive, fun way! Thank you for your time, Aimee and Toby. We can’t believe you’ve only been coding for a few months, Toby – your projects are great! The Tynker community is looking forward to what you come up with next. Keep coding!