The Sonoma County library class taught by high schoolers
404 Found Code started as a school coding club in Santa Rosa. Now it runs free Python classes for ages 8 to 18.
Every error page on the internet says the same thing: 404, not found. A group of students at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa borrowed the phrase for a nonprofit built around a more hopeful message. The thing you were looking for, a free coding class, is found.
404 Found Code began as a coding club. According to the Press Democrat’s Adriana Gutierrez, founders Alexander Yoon, Lisa Zheng and Shengkai Huang noticed how few coding programs existed in Sonoma County. “I found a lot of people agreeing with me, that the programs were much scarcer here than in urban areas,” Yoon told the paper.
So they wrote their own curriculum. It runs eight sessions, teaches Python, and covers the basics such as conditional statements. The group also built a website with a progress dashboard and public tutorials, so a student who misses a Friday is not lost.
The classes are free and open to ages 8 to 18. They run through Sonoma County Libraries, starting at the Rincon Valley branch. Library listings show a nine-week series in April and May 2024 and an eight-week series at the Central Santa Rosa Library in early 2025, covering variables, lists, conditionals, loops and functions. The organization’s site says it also offers HTML classes and Micro:Bit classes, plus Thanksgiving and summer workshops.
Teaching nine-year-olds is its own skill. When the Press Democrat visited, nearly 30 elementary students had turned up for the fifth of the eight classes. One of them, 9-year-old James Turner, said, “I really want to try to code a game.”
Money followed the momentum. Keysight Technologies gave $2,500 in summer 2024, Microsoft Azure gave $2,000, and Digital Ocean put up $2,500 to host the website for two years. Linode contributed server credits. The funds went to T-shirts, a Google Workspace and hosting, which is a very high school list of expenses, in the best way.
The founders have been candid about the limits. Yoon said that with one branch, some children drive 20 to 30 minutes to attend, and that opening more chapters will mean finding more funding. Zheng told the paper she was “crestfallen” when the number of girls in one class dwindled to one. Plans include other county high schools and robotics classes.
The group describes itself as a student-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its homepage reports an award for community service at the 2025 Santa Rosa City Merit Awards. High school students in grades 9 to 12 who live mainly in Sonoma County can apply to join the team, which requires attending workshops in person.
