Lauren, Self-Taught Programmer, Makes Hilarious Projects!

Lauren, Self-Taught Programmer, Makes Hilarious Projects!

What do you get when you combine a love of science with comedy? One of Featured Maker Lauren’s projects! Ten-year-old Lauren is in 5th grade and lives in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. In her free time, she enjoys doing science projects, playing with her dog, and, in her words, “I also love to play the iPad and make cool games on Tynker.” Lauren’s only been using Tynker for a couple months but has created some fantastic projects, so we spoke with her to learn more about why she loves to code!

What do you want to be when you grow up? A scientist or a person who writes code on the computer.

What’s your favorite subject in school? Science!

How did you get introduced to Tynker? My mom and I were in the app store looking for apps, and we found this Tynker app. I wanted to try it out! I was playing my iPad and I tried it out, and it was really great. I loved it.

How did you figure out how to use Tynker? I did tutorials and I also did the Codey block thing too.

What is your favorite thing you’ve made? My favorite thing that I’ve made in Tynker is all the joke projects I’ve made – they make me laugh.

Do you ever Tynker with your friends? No, but I’d like to recommend them to use it. I haven’t shown them what Tynker is yet, but probably I’ll show them next time when they come over.

Do you look at the Tynker community projects? All the time! They sometimes allow you to change them. That’s what I did with the one that you wanted to feature.

What’s your favorite feature in Tynker? I like that you can create anything you want!

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? I usually watch it 5 times because I love it, and then I usually publish it.

What are you planning to make next? Well, I’m working on – have you seen the water bottle one in community projects? I’ve decided to do that, but with race cars – like who’s the fastest race car.

How do you think learning coding now will help you in the future? Well, when I’m creating robots in my scientist high-tech lab when I grow up, I’ll show everyone all my old projects and they will think they’re really cool.

Why do you like to code? I just love it because you can create anything you want. It’s just really fun.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yes, because they could change the world!

What advice would you give for kids starting out with Tynker? I would help them with code blocks!

Lauren’s mom Kathy told us she’s very impressed with Lauren’s projects. “I don’t know how she’s doing it. She comes downstairs and shows it to me, and I just say, ‘This is amazing! How are you doing these things!?’ It’s exciting. I’m really proud of her.”

When asked what benefits she thinks coding has for her child, she told us, “She is really creative – she loves to read, she writes a lot – so this is just expanding what she’s able to do with her creativity. It makes me really, really happy that she has another outlet for all her ideas. I’m excited to see where she goes with coding because she hasn’t been doing it that long at all.”

Kathy mentioned she thought she wouldn’t be able to learn to code because of “grown-up roadblocks,” but Lauren piped up and said, “You can! You just have to play it!”

We love that response! Like Lauren said, anyone can learn to code. Thanks for speaking with us, Lauren and Kathy! We’re excited to see more of your hilarious projects, Lauren!