Make money
Eat donuts
Early to bed, early to rise — dough in the belly, dough on the side.
— Been Fryin’, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1735
School’s winding down and the days are getting hotter. Fifth period hits after lunch and the heat of the day. I unlock the classroom door, muscle my way in before the kids fighting for the roller chairs, hit the lights and crack the back door in an attempt to coax the heavy air to move through a portable with windows that don’t open.
The AP test was last Thursday so now we’re on easy street. Friday I switched out jeans and new t-shirts for shorts and old t-shirts. With the weight of the test lifted, I’m more relaxed and so are the kids. They feel summer coming.
My job is done — they coded their projects, they all took the test and they all did great (so they tell me).
Test scores come out July 6, so we’ll see, but I feel good about it too — we covered a ton of material in the 3 months I had with them. While it’s a constant battle to hold their attention, even when I think they’re distracted they’re listening.
I brought in a bunch of donuts on Friday for a sugar fueled test debrief. Riding high on the wave of finishing the test, I got lots of stories like the kid who got stuck in the wrong test section thanks to the schools intermittent WiFi. Two kids forgot their chromebooks and the administrator had to sprint to the office and back to get spares for them. I gave her a donut for her troubles. A lot of kids finished early and just had to wait (the test was 3hrs).
One kid kept sneaking back to the boxes as we talked, eventually downing four donuts. He was a little green by the end of class, but then went on to catch for the varsity baseball team. They won league later that day confirming donuts are a critical element of any diet.
But I can’t let these kids go without hands-on AI — it’d be a crime to teach CS without AI today, so this week we get AI to write the code.
Last year, vibe coding became a movement powered by tech enthusiasts thrilled with AI writing programs they wanted but couldn’t code. My kids had never heard the term, and I don’t like it much, so I’m calling this unit AI Mad Libs. They all know Mad Libs and that surprised me — they aren’t always on their screens. I build short AI prompts for various games, they fill in the blanks to make it theirs and we iterate from there.
Their ideas are better than mine. Honestly they do better when they go rogue off the prescriptive prompts. AI is good enough to make it work. One of my quiet kids yesterday sat in the back of the room, heads down building Neon Parkour. He had a crowd around him playing it by the end of class.
We’ve also got: Grand Slam Guesser, Forge of Legends, Echoes of Time, Aura Chiba and Neon Sphere 3D. Still got one more day.
Check them all: https://analynet.xyz.
I had an ulterior motive in bringing in the donuts — I wanted to show off my demo AI app — DOUGH DROP.
With Dough Drop you build your dream donut, watch it bake and then get roasted by a gallery of top AI Celebrity Chefs: Jacques the French pastry chef, Guy Fieri (Sonoma County’s hometown hero) and Gordon Ramsay.
You can share the roasts with your friends. Guy hypes you up while Gordon tears you down (usually): 1
In the midst of the Friday’s donut-palooza I checked in with the senior table. We’ve been through it and they’ve decided I’m ok now. They asked me if I knew anything about stocks.
I try to figure them out; they try to figure me out. I said sure, I know a bit. Then they asked me about day trading. I said, yeah if you like gambling. They like gambling.
One of the seniors was serious about this, so we had AI build this Python WALL STREET SIMULATOR and we ran through it as a class.
It doesn’t matter if you have a lot or a little to start. Put in the minimum to open a brokerage account, throw a little bit in a month. $10/mo is a start. Get a job, up it to $100/mo. Get a promotion, up it to $1000/mo.
This is the thing I will never convince these kids or any kid of — they have the best investment advantage right now — TIME. If you’re under 30 reading this — do it now! At 16ish my kids have 30+ years and a little bit of money will grow into a big bit of money with some time.
As far as what you invest in, as long as it’s a diversified fund, that’s secondary to just getting started. Don’t get stuck on picking the perfect fund. Sure fire winner — drop it in a no-load broad market index like VTSAX and just keep watering it.
Market conditions? No matter. You can’t control the future. With a time horizon of 10+ years it’ll even out.
Graton Casino down the road here just added a new wing for high rollers including fancy restaurants like SoCo Dough Co. They’re selling this $275 Donut:
Nah.
There are three Easter egg combos that score an 11 depending on the Chef. For Jacques it’s the game’s iconic donut: vanilla cake with strawberry frosting and sprinkles. For Gordon it’s a plain glazed. For Guy it’s a fluffy donut, maple glaze, with bacon bits and Cap’n Crunch on top.
You are living the dream! Teaching coding to kids at such an exciting time, and getting to include AI tools and vibe coding? Rad.
There's a version of education that's purely about test prep and a version that's about giving kids tools they'll actually use. You clearly know which one matters Andrew.