Toby McDonald caught the coding bug as early as 2nd grade. After teaching himself how to set up a Minecraft server on his dad’s laptop, Toby wanted to share the experience with his friends. Learning to mod the server on the laptop and setting up port forwarding on the router was just the beginning of what has turned into a lifelong journey. By junior high, Toby was already creating functional websites using JavaScript and had been designated by his Boy Scouts troop as the in-house webmaster. After Toby taught himself to set up DNS, he decided to learn PHP to grow his web development skills further.

Having already found his niche at an early age, Toby applied for his local STEM magnet school seeking to gain practical experience in technology before beginning his career. The summer before he started high school, he discovered his other passion: teaching programming to others and sharing his passion for coding. Throughout the course of an eight-week summer camp, he taught Boy Scouts Java and Python, helping them earn their programming merit badge along the way. This skill would eventually prove useful at hackathons where Toby has often found himself bringing many friends and classmates new to hackathons, organizing teams of people new to coding and using the opportunity to teach them. Toby says it is “incredible to have an opportunity to learn” from veterans at hackathons but also “to share my own knowledge and ideas with others.”

Discovering the hacker community helped Toby tremendously with both of his passions. His freshman year of high school, his school hosted its first ever hackathon. Toby was unable to go, but hearing stories from his friends about how incredible the experience was motivated him to go to his first hackathon. Shortly thereafter, despite the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down in-person events for two years, Toby competed in the University of Virginia’s virtual HooHacks 2021. The next year, Toby competed at Purdue’s BoilerMake, Virginia Tech’s VTHacks, the College of William and Mary’s Cypher Hacks, and a second run at HooHacks, this time taking the gold with his team of rookie hackers. Growing his skillset by participating in dozens of Major League Hacking events, Toby has demonstrated his passion for hackathons.

Toby says technology has given him a “whole different path to follow in life… and hackathons have helped a lot with that.” Recently, as an incoming university Freshman, Toby was selected for an internship, and he says “it was actually hackathons that made me stand out as an applicant, because effectively everyone applying had the same good grades.” He will be heading to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the fall to pursue a degree in computer science, and he plans to stay involved through the club that organizes HackRPI. Toby loves helping others at hackathons, teaching them to code and sharing his passion for technology, and he will no doubt continue leading the way as a mentor to young hackers just getting started.