Carmen Ebanks struggles to contain her enthusiasm as she describes the computer game she is making in an excited stream-of-consciousness narrative.
After three days at the Code Cayman camp, the 10-year-old Red Bay Primary School student has caught the coding bug.
“I actually didn’t even know what html was,” she said, referring to the basic markup language for web pages, adding, “now I made my own little game, basically”.
Ebanks, in a green hoodie and an ‘I love Singapore’ T-shirt, already looks like a junior coder. But the week-long camp is really the first time she has felt enthusiastic about tech.
“It is pretty easy once you really pay attention. I don’t usually do too well at computers but when I am here I feel comfortable, I can express it. You are learning all the information in a fun way.”
Ebanks is one of more than a dozen students at the latest Code(Cayman) summer camp, learning basic coding and programming skills.
On Thursday morning, tutor Jason Nehra, also the managing director of Code(Cayman), strolled through the classroom at Grand Pavilion, marking code suggestions on the walls in erasable pen, helping youngsters with their work and guiding them through the creation of simple web-based games.
On Ronnie Cayasso’s screen an animated character raced in a blur across the page.
“I am trying to make him spin around,” the 13-year-old said as he tinkered with the code.
Later he works on a short game, with the rest of the class, that allows the player to guess a number and for the computer, using a coded random number generator, to tell them if they were right or wrong.
It’s a few lines of code, but there is lots to get right and the satisfaction is evident on the faces of the students when their page of text and characters turns into a playable game.
For some it is the first taste of coding, for others it is the building block to a future career.
“I would love to eventually make a game like Sonic or probably Pizza Tower,” says Cayasso.
There are realistic career prospects in the game industry – one of the biggest employers in the tech sector, says Nehra.
But there are thousands of other careers that involve coding and as the tech and artificial intelligence influence grows globally and within Cayman, he believes these types of skills will be invaluable.
“Our aim is really just to generate enthusiasm for tech and show that tech careers are fun and rewarding, and they are here in Cayman.”
He said kids were sometimes easier to convince than parents, who often want their children to go into law or accounting – traditional blue-chip careers in Cayman.
But he believes that dynamic is changing. AI could make some white-collar jobs obsolete and an affinity with coding and computing is likely to be a key requirement in many careers.
Additionally, Tech Cayman and Cayman Enterprise City are starting to bring innovative businesses to the island that would like to recruit locally, he said.
”We have got to get ahead of the wave,” he added.
Code(Cayman) has run four summer camps this year. The first was in partnership with Blockchain software company Block One and involved a more intensive approach with older students looking to segue into further study and potential careers in the industry.
The others were aimed at younger children and designed as more of an intro course.
The organisation now provides after-school programmes and evening classes across a broad tech syllabus, partnering with some of the biggest businesses in Cayman.
Fintech business Cartan’s co-founders Brian Tang and Brandon Caruana established Code Cayman as a non-profit provided resources to develop its programming, and continue serving on its board.
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