Paddy Loves to Create with Code! 

Our Featured Maker is Paddy from Australia! He is nine years old and has a passion for coding, as well as playing piano. He has been playing the piano for five years and likes to create his own songs, but also takes lessons to improve!

Paddy would love to be a pianist when he grows up and likes the band Imagine Dragons. While in school, Paddy loves his physical education class, because he gets to run around and play sports! Learn more about Paddy and why he loves to code.

How did you get introduced to Tynker and how long have you been coding? Last year, our teacher told us to download Tynker. I didn’t know how to use it, so I was just using the on/start move templates. Then, I got a bit of code from other games and started making games that got pretty big. I made Don’t Touch the Axe. It was very plain, but then that got featured and I added a lot more! I’m about to publish Don’t Touch the Axe Level 2!

How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? I did this one called Dragon’s Spell, which was pretty easy, but I learned most of my code from this game called, Tynker’s Hardest Game 101. And it showed me how to use a lot of code!

How have your coding skills improved since you started using Tynker? They’ve improved a lot! I’ve made a lot more projects and most of the projects in the community showed me how to use Tynker.

How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was like, ‘Wow, that’s got a lot of views!’ It was really cool; I told all my friends about it!

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? Don’t Touch the Axe, because it’s very hard! I’d say it took me about three nights to make the basic start of it, then I added a whole lot more, like skins and stuff.

Where did you get the idea for your favorite project? I just came up with it!

How do you get inspiration for your projects? Sometimes, I get them from real games and sometimes I just come up with them in my head. Other times I’ll get them off the community board!

Why do you like to code? I like making games and it’s fun to see how many likes and views I can get. All of my projects together have over one million views! 

What is your favorite way to use code? I mostly use the movement and repeat blocks. After I’ve watched the Our Planet series, I’ve made a lot of global warming projects. And at least two thousand people have seen it!

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? I look for glitches, then I’ll publish it right away.

What’s the best thing about Tynker? That you can create your own games and do whatever you want on it!

How do you think learning to code has prepared you for the future? When I show my projects to my teachers, they think it’s amazing. So, I think that’s a good sign that it will help me a lot in my future.

Do you think other kids should try coding? Yes, because it’s very fun and I think everyone would like it.

Paddy’s mother, Ainslie, joined the conversation and expressed her feelings about what she thinks about him learning to code. “It’s great! He’s got two brothers and all three of them do it. It’s been really surprising and amazing to see how well they’ve done!”

Ainslie also told us: “We think Tynker is a very healthy online pursuit, so we’re happy for them to do it! I think coding is the way of the future and a wonderful thing for them to get their head around at a young age. Everything we deal with now has to do with programming and computers, so it’s letting him understand the way the world works!”

We want to thank Paddy and Ainslie for taking the time to interview with us. We can’t wait to see what else Paddy will make in the future! Happy coding!