For many of us, coding seems so difficult that we don’t even make an attempt. But for Kai Justice, a junior at Urbana High School, it’s not so hard. ThatNumberOne is Kai’s online name and it’s what he goes by when he is being referred to by online friends and clients. Kai is unsure on how he got into coding in the first place, but he does know that gaming inspired him to want to make his own games. The motivation he got from playing games inspired him to try to do it himself, which led to coding.

Kai does coding commissions as a side hustle while he waits for a large-scale coding opportunity; these commissions can range from making a small game to coding an entire website. 

When it comes to coding, you need to know certain computer “languages” to write instructions for the computer. It lets the programmer express data processing in a symbolic manner without regard to machine-specific details. Being able to be so involved in coding it would be impossible to not know multiple coding languages. Kai is fluent in C/C++ , Python , Java , Javascript / NodeJS , and Typescript. Explaining all of the languages Kai knows would drag out this article and become rather boring, so Kai only explains his favorite coding language which is Typescript ü. “It’s just a better Javascript that allows you to avoid messiness and is just all around better.”

Coding isn’t Kai’s only hobby; fencing and playing guitar are recent endeavors of his. Kai enjoys both of his newfound hobbies but says, “Despite starting both hobbies at the same time, I’m confident that after high school I’ll stop doing guitar, but fencing I will continue doing.” After this comment from Kai a new question arose: Why fencing?

Kai explains, “ You can actually maybe go places with fencing, like scholarships are a possible thing to achieve through fencing if you get into internationals or nationals.”

At the moment Kai Justice is striving to be a Game Developer, but he’s aware of how little it pays which is $13,000 to $35,500. Kai sees it as his long time passion and dream but with money problems being prevalent as a Game Developer he has multiple jobs he can fall back on. In case Game Developing falls through, he would be able to become a Legacy Systems engineer, and if that falls through he will become homeless.

Kai’s hard working mindset and his raw talent pave and sculpt the way towards a bright and creative future.