Cool Kid Joseph Gil loves coding & helping classmates

Seventeen-year-old Joseph Gil loves everything about coding.

"The entire world is going digital," said Gil. "Everything is going to be code now!"

That love started with playing video games as a young child. Gil then found himself helping his family with their own electronics problems.

"He's always been interested in computers and electronics," said Carolyn Onken, Gil's great-grandmother. "Any computer I problem I had, he could fix."

So when Onken saw a newspaper ad for a computer coding boot camp course at the University of Redlands, she told her great-grandson about it, and he signed up.

"It's really cool to see how things are made and why it works," said Gil, "It's not magic, you know, and it's not easy or everyone would do it!"

Gil now takes a two-hour bus ride after school to Redlands three days a week, every week, to take the class and does his high school homework along the way. The university says he's also excelling in the course.

"I didn't expect to get people younger than 18," said Dan Otter, the Associate Dean of The School of Continuing Studies at the University of Redlands. "I thought, yeah, let's do this! Let's have him sign up and I thought for a moment at some point he might end up co-teaching this class."

Gil's dream is to study computer science and work in cyber security.

But first, as President of his high school's technology club, this ABC7 Cool Kid is sharing what he's learning at the university with his teenage classmates.

"It really helps me learn when I teach them," said Gil. "And it's really cool because I'm just spreading this knowledge and everyone's getting it."