#CodingLabStudents: Jack Tay, 12, Platinum Award Winner, HCIC 2025
Meet Jack Tay, our amazing #CodingLabStudent who loves video games, coding, and is now a proud Platinum award winner at HCIC 2025!
At just 12 years old, Jack Tay from Qihua Primary School has already carved his name among the top young coders in Singapore winning the Platinum Award at the prestigious Hwa Chong Infocomm Challenge (HCIC) 2025. Jack’s journey is one of passion, perseverance, and problem-solving prowess. His story reflects not only an early spark in coding but a burning determination to overcome obstacles and rise to the top 1.5% of all participants.
Jack’s story began in Kindergarten 2, when a simple Cubetto robot sparked his interest in coding. That curiosity blossomed into a real passion when he joined a Scratch Jr holiday camp at Coding Lab, and since then, he has never looked back. From Scratch to Python, Jack has built creative projects, honed his logical thinking, and learned the art of perseverance—especially when faced with a tricky bug.
“Coding has allowed me to learn to persevere and be patient, especially when there is an error and I love how coding lets me turn ideas into real things and solve everyday problems with technology.”
Congratulations on winning an award at the HCIC! How did you feel about your achievement?
Winning the HCIC award was an incredible honour. I felt proud and grateful that I had put in the effort to revise for the competition and grateful to my parents and teachers for helping me train for HCIC.
When asked about his HCIC experience, Jack shared:
The HCIC was hard, as I did not know some of the questions, but managed to use elimination to eliminate the wrong answers. I learnt to persevere through no matter how hard something is, as it doesn't hurt to try.
The last programming question posed the biggest challenge: looping through a list to find multiples of 2 and 5. After several attempts and errors, Jack finally cracked the logic by separating the conditions for each multiple—a true lesson in trial, error, and critical thinking.
Outside of coding, Jack is just like any other fun-loving kid. He enjoys video games, and plays Badminton and Table Tennis for leisure. But coding continues to be his outlet for creativity and growth.
Not only does Jack know Python, the programming language — he can also handle a real python!
What do you like about coding? How has coding made a difference in your life?
I like how coding allowed me to create anything I want, and it made a big difference in my life. Coding has allowed me to learn to persevere and be patient, especially when there is an error, debugging it will be hard as I have to look through all the lines of code.
How did you get started at Coding Lab?
With support from his family and mentors at Coding Lab, especially Teacher Selena and Teacher Jeslyn, Jack built a strong foundation in programming and developed confidence to shine in HCIC. He particularly loved how Coding Lab’s hackathons let him experiment with original ideas and express his creativity.
Looking ahead, Jack dreams of becoming a software developer who creates antivirus software to protect computers from threats. He’s already working on an impressive side project:
Take a look at Jack’s program, Cells – The Great Battle, a project where he combines storytelling and code in a fun and educational way!
“I like how Coding Lab gave me a hands-on experience that not only provided pre-made examples for us, but also gave us the opportunity to create what we wanted, especially during the Hackathons.”
His advice to future HCIC participants?
“To all the young coders who want to participate in HCIC, remember to never give up, and if you are taking Coding Lab's HCIC Prep Class, all the notes are really useful, so remember to revise them!”
Here at Coding Lab, we are incredibly proud of Jack’s achievements and growth in his coding journey. Stories like his inspire us to continue nurturing the next generation of tech leaders. Our mission is to empower children to reach their fullest potential through code—and we hope that Jack’s journey will motivate you to invest in your child’s future through coding education!
Jack Tay started attending P102 Scratch 2 class at Coding Lab when he was barely 8 years of age and advanced his way to our S112 Python 2 by the time he was 12. He was awarded the Platinum Award (the highest honour) at the Hwa Chong Infocomm Challenge (HCIC) 2025.
Our #CodingLabStudents blogs feature our ambitious students and their ongoing coding journeys – be it the budding coder or advanced Python Pro, we appreciate each and every single one’s efforts as they progress to greater heights. 🌱
Coding Lab offers an award-winning curriculum specially for ages 5 to 18 – check out our courses to begin your own coding journey today!
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