Each student at CodeWizardsHQ has an interesting story to tell. These students not only excel at coding, but they participate in an array of school and community activities. Yahya, a CodeWizardsHQ middle schooler, is an honors student and an athlete. He also gives back to his community in a very unique way.
Yahya’s Coding Journey
Yahya developed an interest in coding and computers early. He remembers being introduced to Scratch in school.
“I was seven or eight years old, and I saw a lot of people going on Scratch, and so I tried it myself, and the block coding was pretty easy. I made some games and went to Python.”
After briefly working with Scratch, he was ready to move beyond that language and found some online video resources. He learned about functions and did some projects in Python.
Yahya’s mom recognized her son’s interest in computers and started searching for options to expand his knowledge. It was during the pandemic, and online learning opportunities were key.
“He showed an interest in computers since he was in second grade. When a computer is in his hands, it feels like he’s a grownup solving problems. He was an advanced student in math, and we wanted to do something related to the computer. Coding was obviously the first thing that came to mind. We all know that coding is a basic foundation for this generation for the future.”
She did extensive research and found CodeWizardsHQ. She chose CodeWizards based on reviews and its structured curriculum.
“The thing that I like about CodeWizards is the structured curriculum. Prerequisite courses open other courses. You finish elementary school, and you go to middle school. When you finish middle school, you go to high school. It’s not just one course and that’s it.”
Eleven-year-old Yahya is now in an impressive twelfth class at CodeWizardsHQ. He has progressed to the second course in Middle School Wizard Level II, Interactive JavaScript, a course where students learn to add JavaScript to their web pages to create dynamic applications that engage users. In addition to JavaScript during his tenure at CodeWizardsHQ, Yahya has learned Scratch, HTML/CSS, and Python. He has a definite preference.
“My favorite language is Python because it’s easy to code with and you can make a lot of things with it.”
Favorite Projects
He has enjoyed creating a long list of projects at CodeWizardsHQ, but cites a few in particular. He remembers a Scratch game that he created with a car that avoided obstacles. He also liked coding a chatbot and a calculator using Python.
Yahya is interested in learning more advanced Python skills and making games with Python. He is looking forward to CodeWizard’s Internship Program. CodeWizardsHQ’s courses culminate with a unique internship opportunity for its graduates. Yahya is excited about participating and creating projects that can be used in the real world.
Yahya has used his coding foundation to build an extensive collection of projects on his own. He has made a series of calculators. One performs complex operations like absolute values and exponents and calculates areas and perimeters. Another makes metric conversions. Yet another project is an interactive math problem generator that gives correct answers when a user requests them.
School and Hobbies
