Aidan is 14 years old, and started coding with KTBYTE nearly 6 years ago. He began working on USACO level material 3 years ago at age 11 (which is super young to start such high level material)! Aidan’s story is one that can give inspiration to both parents and students on their journey with coding!
Starting from Scratch
Aidan’s road to success with code started at the age of 5. Having a father as a developer gave Aidan the unique advantage of learning to code with family. During our conversation Aidan talked about spending his Friday evenings at home creating Scratch projects with family. His beginning into code was surrounded by support from both parents and nurtured a sense of creativity, and willingness to make mistakes. In his own words
“I immediately fell in love with the prospect of infinite possibilities and the satisfaction of creating something that worked, leading me to spend hours on end making my own projects, watching tutorials on YouTube, and reading books.”
Building blocks and JavaBlocks
Aidan’s first class with KTBYTE was our JavaBlocks CORE2 Weeklong! He excelled at the course and enjoyed the weeklong format, so he came back for the CORE3 Weeklong. Aidan’s curiosity and drive pushed him into robotics, other CS focused courses and eventually to high level competition material. His family played a key role in encouraging to take the tools he was learning and apply them in creating games like Monopoly, this game with complex rules, and different behavior coming from different spaces allowed him to understand how various concepts could come together and his completion of the project inspired him to continue learning.
In his courses with us Aidan learned processing to start, and later on Java. He spoke about how he was glad to have learned Java first because, with it being an Object Oriented language, and since it’s been around for so long it’s quite big which can be complicated but it set him up for a better understanding of Python, and it made looking at other languages much easier.
“Just knowing Java makes everything a lot more simple, because a lot of the concepts in other languages, like Python, already exist within Java. “
Achievements and Accolades
At the age of 14 Aidan has already been promoted to USACO silver, he has completed course material more difficult than that on the AP CS A exam and he’s built an incredibly strong foundation of Computer Science knowledge. Aidan is currently working on projects in our AI and machine learning class and participated in our KTBYTE Hackathon winning “Best Beginner Team Hack” for his project “Flashlight Escaping”.
Flashlight Escaping Information
You have a flashlight that has a limited battery supply. Find the key in each room unlock the door and stun ghosts with your flashlight. Don’t get hit by any ghosts. Try to get as far as you can! Every few rooms, there is a battery you can pick up to get more battery supply. Every room you complete, a new ghost spawns.
What’s ahead?
For a student who has excelled at CS like he has I was curious to see what goals Aidan had for his future. He has high hopes of opening his own company one day using code he’s created, and sharing what he’s learned with other students. Aidan hopes to continue competing in other hackathons, learn to do more with AI, and continue learning more about CS.
Advice to other students
Aidan’s advice to other students focuses on curiosity. He encourges students to become the problem solver and utilize all the resources they have access to in finding answers. Some of his favorite websites for finding explanations about code were: W3schools, Geeksforgeeks, and Stackoverflow. He was able to piece together lots of information on his own and once he joined KTBYTE classes with live instruction it allowed him to ask questions and get real time answers, within a guided curriculum. In addition to classes and web resources he said that he spent lots of time working with our Office Hours teaching assistants working through concepts and solving problems in his code. This allowed him to try harder material, with the knowledge he was just a meeting away from getting help.
In Closing
As someone who’s worked with KTBYTE now for over 5 years and i’ve seen so many students come throught the virtual doors. Aidan’s story is one of nurturing knowledge and letting it flourish. As a staff we were nervous to see such a young student move into 5b, let alone into USACO work, but our goal is to support students in whatever they’re excited about. Aidan has proven that with support, courage to make mistakes, and a whole lot of curiosity these kids can do anything. We’re excited to see what Aidan will do in the future, after all he’s still just 14!
