Stephen Gruppetta
Founder and Lead Educator at Codetoday
Codetoday was founded in 2016 by Stephen Gruppetta. The company, then and now, is very much shaped by his experiences with education and coding.
Stephen studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Malta graduating in 2000 with a first class degree. He then moved to London where he started his research career at the Physics Department at Imperial College London. He obtained his PhD in Optics and Imaging Science in 2004. His research focused on developing novel methods to image the retina in the human eye to diagnose disease.
Following postdoctoral research posts in London and Paris, Stephen was awarded an Academic Fellowship to set up his research group at City University London where he later continued as a tenured academic.
Coding has been a key part of Stephen's professional work as a research scientist throughout his career. Teaching was also a prominent part of his role and he won several awards for his contribution to education during his time at City University.
His love for coding and education merged once he left academia as he set up codetoday. At this time coding was finding a new role in children's education around the world, but many education systems were struggling to teach it in a thorough and engaging way due to lack of experienced programmers in the education sector. Too many coding companies, then and now, treated coding as a gimmick and lacked an educational drive. Others taught coding in a dry and uninspiring manner. Stephen knew from his coding and teaching experience that what was needed is a curriculum that blends a thorough, academic approach with engaging, creative projects.
Codetoday's ethos and methods are still based on those founding principles.
Stephen now focusses on running Codetoday and teaching students of all ages through Codetoday's two platforms: Codetoday Unlimited for young people and The Python Coding Place for adults..
Stephen is also an active participant in the worldwide Python programming community. He is a contributing author on one of the leading Python sites worldwide, RealPython.com. He writes more regularly on his own publication, The Python Coding Stack.
Stephen has also authored a book aimed for adult learners who want to start learning to code using Python: The Python Coding Book. The book takes a relaxed and friendly approach and has rapidly gained a lot of faithful followers! The book is part of a growing stack of resources for adults at The Python Coding Place.