ran a game jam and taught a room of kids to code

Date : 2025 (approx)

so this year i did two things that had nothing to do with shipping my own code and honestly they might be the ones i'm proudest of. first, i ran a game jam at TinkerSpace in kochi. as far as i can tell it was the first proper game jam of its size here, students came in from all over kerala, and we gave them 24 hours to go from nothing to an actual playable game. watching people who'd never opened a game engine before end up with a THING they could show their friends 24 hours later, i don't have great words for it. that's the exact feeling that hooked me at 11, and getting to hand it to a whole room of people at once is unreal

the other thing was teaching. i went and taught the basics of computer science and programming, in lua of all things, to a group of kids at dharmagiri vikas. the whole point was to get young girls into stem and to make it really clear that where you start doesn't decide where you end up. i mean i learned everything on a 4gb windows 7 laptop that could barely run chrome, so i genuinely believe that. you do not need a fancy setup or permission or the perfect circumstances, you need something that runs and a reason to keep poking at it

teaching also does this thing where it exposes every hole in your own understanding. you can't hand-wave in front of a kid asking "but WHY does the loop do that", you actually have to know. so i came out of both of these a better explainer and honestly a better programmer. i think this is a part of me i want to keep feeding, the building is great but building the next batch of builders might be the better use of it