When I was a kid, I had a 3ds. I’ve always wanted to make my own games. One day, I found an app on the 3ds called Petit Computer. The app promised me that I would be able to write my own games on my 3ds in BASIC programming language. Little did I know BASIC didn’t mean easy.

I downloaded the app and got instantly frustrated by the poorly localized documentation. I was determined to make my own game, so I went online to look for any communities and information about Petit computer. There was so little information about the app’s special language called SmileBasic, so I began to learn other programming languages in hopes that I would be able to apply what I learned to SmileBasic.

From this moment, I was completely infatuated with learning to code. I would spend weekends and vacations learning as much as I could. The internet provided me with tons of free resources. I went on sites like Codecademy, W3schools, Khan Academy, and YouTube. I learned languages like Java, JavaScript, C, HTML, and CSS. However, when I tried to make apps with any of these languages, I found I wasn’t able to put the concepts that I learned together.

Eventually, I got into high school. My school offered two computer science courses and I was able to learn C and Java in a classroom. I found the missing piece to learning and all the concepts I tried so hard to understand on my own began to click. The difference that I found between learning on my own and learning in a classroom was community. I now had a teacher to ask questions, and classmates to bounce ideas with.

The summer after I completed both courses, my years of persistence finally paid off. I was able to flex my mastery of coding by finishing my first game, a creatively named shoot ‘em up game called “Shoot ‘em up”.

There are some success stories of people learning to code from the free resources on the internet. I am not one of them. I am a success of learning in a community. At Spicy Coding Academy, we tailor our courses to not only teach you how to code in a fun and memorable way that prepares you for the industry, but to remind you that life is better when we're all in it together.

Back when I was in college, I remember I was faced with a hard decision on if I should switch my major to computer science or to keep my current teaching major and attend a coding boot camp.
The problem I encountered with choosing to attend a coding boot camp is that they were extremely expensive and would’ve required me to either pull out an expensive loan for 15k+ or to promise that I’ll give a portion of my salary to the coding boot camp for a whole year.

Neither of those options sounded nice and so I ended up simply changing my major to Computer Science and completing the program. I remember wishing that there were more affordable coding boot camps that would give more people an opportunity to learn because regardless, I had to take out multiple loans for my education.

After college, I was given some free subscriptions to coding classes and found another issue. Not only were they extremely expensive, but they were beyond boring. I can’t tell you how many instructors put me to sleep after listening to their monotone voice boringly explain the concepts. It’s almost as if they looked forward to creating the most boring class possible.

It made me not want to learn and it also made it seem like a hassle to learn. At that moment, I came up with the idea of creating a boot camp that not only was actually affordable, but it was fun. I’ve been an avid story teller, I’ve performed improv downtown and I loved being in plays and I knew I could utilize that skill set to create something worth the money at a cheaper rate than most boot camps.

So I decided to meld what I learned in capturing the audience’s attention in storytelling, improv, and plays in with learning how to code. On top of that, I took what I learned from memory training games to actually make the concepts stick in the head.

Again, so many boot camps and coding classes I took online were boring and the concepts did not stick because it’s almost like the people teaching it did not understand the art of captivating an audience.

Here at spicy coding academy, we truly make learning fun. We combine industry learned knowledge with stories and games to make learning in a community fun and fulfilling. You not only will be ready for a job after this academy, but you’ll be glad you were part of a community that valued having a good time just as much as we value learning knowledge.