About me
My name is Xander Burnett. I don’t do much except code, play video games, and chip away at the seemingly endless mountain of homework I have. I live with both of my loving parents, my younger sister Mackenzie, my fish Lenny, and my two cats Twix and Tex. I have many plants, around 28 in total, all of which I try my best to keep alive. I have taught myself crochet, which I occasionally use to make little woolen balls. I’ve made so many balls that I have lost count. I also like tying knots, I even have my own pet knot. I enjoy watching and identifying birds, however, recently there haven’t been many around my house.
Why I joined PTEC
I decided to apply for PTEC in grade 8 for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that I wanted to learn how to make games. My interest in making games began when I was introduced to Scratch in school. Scratch is basically like coding but for beginners. After Scratch, I spent most of my free time trying to make games with it, but Scratch had its limits which is why I decided that I wanted to try learning real coding. The other reason I applied for PTEC was that both of my two friends had also applied so I wanted to do the same. Unfortunately, neither of them are still in PTEC now.
I want to make a game
By the end of PTEC, I hope to make a game. I have tried many times to make a full game and failed all those times. This is for a few reasons. One reason is because I constantly come up with many more interesting ideas that I want to make into games more than whatever idea I am currently working on which is a problem because if I can’t stick to just one idea then I will never finish a game. Another reason I haven’t made a full game is because I often run into problems that I can’t figure out. Oftentimes with code a single character out of place can break everything. Sometimes the error is obvious, however, my computer is very bad at telling me what is wrong. In other words, I spend days to weeks on problem solving when I have one comma instead of a period, or other things like that. Sometimes these kinds of things frustrate me enough that I decide to try making something else, which basically means that I never come back to that idea ever again. All in all these reasons have prevented me from completing a game without fail for the last two years. That is why when I complete my fourth and final year in PTEC I want to finally make a game.