🎮 From Tutorials to Original Games

The Pytch team was delighted to return to Dublin City University (DCU) to deliver a creative coding workshop for students attending the Centre for Academic Talent (CAT) Summer Programme, part of Centre for Talented Youth Ireland (CTYI).

Led by Ben North and Sara Fiori, the workshop introduced students to creative coding in Python using Pytch. Participants worked through interactive tutorials before extending their games with their own ideas, experimenting with new gameplay features, animations, sound effects and increasingly challenging mechanics.

It was fantastic to see how quickly students moved beyond the tutorials. Many created impressive customisations, from animated characters and life counters to sophisticated enemy behaviour, tile-based worlds and inventive game mechanics. Several students continued refining their projects after the workshop and later shared both their creations and thoughtful feedback with the Pytch team.

⭐ Learning Together to Shape the Future of Pytch

As part of the workshop, 25 students generously participated in Pytch’s research, helping us better understand how young people learn programming and how the platform can continue to improve.

The feedback was extremely positive. Students particularly valued the step-by-step tutorials, helpful error messages and the way Pytch combines familiar Scratch concepts with Python. They also shared thoughtful suggestions for future features, providing valuable insights that will help shape the ongoing development of Pytch.

💙 Thank You

A huge thank you to all of the students for their enthusiasm, creativity and valuable feedback throughout the day.

Special thanks to Sean Hammond, teacher at the CAT Summer Programme and the CTYI/CAT team for their warm welcome, excellent organisation and continued support. We are always delighted to work with such enthusiastic young programmers and look forward to returning again in the future.