Zunair Cooks Up Delicious Coding Projects!

Zunair is an 11-year-old from Pennsylvania with an appetite for playing games, reading books, and coding. When he’s not playing Fortnite or reading his favorite books, Zunair turns to creating food-related Tynker projects! Zunair loves life as much as he loves food, excitedly telling us, “I’m always happy with what I have!”

Zunair’s mom, Arif, has noticed that Tynker helps her son get into a creative mindset. Coupled with his enthusiasm, this creativity really inspires him to code! Zunair’s culinary passions combined with his creativity have led to a full course of food-themed projects published under his name. We had the chance to speak to Zunair about his budding coding career!

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a doctor when I grow up because I want to help people and save people.

How did you get introduced to Tynker? I’ve been coding since the beginning of 4th grade – I was introduced to coding by my mom and teacher. At the beginning of 5th grade, my STEAM teacher introduced me to Tynker, and ever since, I’ve been coding my own projects.

How did you learn how to use Tynker when you were first starting out? I knew how to code but I had no ideas, so my friend made a project and I really liked the way he made it. Then I made my own version of it!

How did you feel when you found out your project had been featured? I was really excited, but I first didn’t know my project was featured. My friend goes on the community projects all the time to play games – he showed me that my project was featured. This made me really happy!

What is your favorite project you’ve made so far? Junk Food Eating is my favorite, because I love eating and it reminds me of myself.

“Fast Food Eating”

How do you get inspiration for your projects? Most of my games involve eating! I have 4 games about eating: Ice Cream Licking, Pac-Man Eats Food, Revenge of the Food (which is a new project where food is eating Pac-Man instead of Pac-Man eating food), and then I have Fast Food Eating.

What do you do with a project when you’re done with it? I usually start off with a base and then I publish it. As people start playing it, they want more. So, I add more and more to the game until I have no room left to do anything on the game.

What are you planning to make next? I’m planning on sticking with Revenge of the Food.

“Revenge of the Food”

Why do you like to code? I like to code because it’s my way of relieving stress. If I’m bored I do that – if I don’t want to play video games or read, I jump on my iPad and go Tynker.

What’s your favorite thing you can do in Tynker? My favorite thing is looking at the community projects. It shows what everyone else likes to do and the style other people like to use. I love the clicker games! It’s a really cool way to code, where you have to make money and slowly unlock stuff.

How do you think learning coding has prepared you for the future? I think it will help me design stuff. I want to create a robot when I grow up. I made a prototype with my friend already and I want to find a way to code it, so this is helping me in that direction.

Do you think other kids should try coding? I think they should, because it’s fun and at the same time you’re learning!

What advice would you give to kids starting out with Tynker? When I first started, I went to the community projects to see other projects and see how they work. Those projects inspired me to make a project. I would tell other kids to always go from easy to hard and never instantly try to go to hard, or you’ll misunderstand everything.

Zunair’s mother, Arif, had some words to say about Zunair’s success in Tynker. Arif, who has a Master’s degree in computer science, gives Zunair tips for his projects to support his interest in coding. “Anytime Zunair wants to code something, he says ‘give me an idea of how to work on this.’ I just say, ‘think in this direction,’ and he just starts working on that.”

Arif also encourages other kids to start coding. She believes that “coding definitely gives kids a creative mind. It makes them build their creativity and think about coding and how to get to the next level.” Arif is certain that Tynker has better prepared Zunair for the future and helped guide his own passions.

We hope Zunair continues to serve up delicious and tasty projects for the Tynker community – so far every project he’s created has been 5 stars. We’re glad to hear how coding has been a help for Zunair. It was great getting to know you better, Zunair!