About 60 students took part in the debut of a youth-led coding competition at the Arlington Career Center this weekend.
“We had to communicate with many people — it was quite an effort,” said Nate Levin, a senior at Yorktown High School who, along with Brayden Zee of Yorktown and Sheel Shah of Arlington Tech, organized the 4.5-hour event.
All three are computer-science students at the Arlington Career Center, and used what they learned in past participation in regional computer-coding events to bring one together at the local level. Participating students ranged from sixth grade to 12th.
“The goal is to be engaging and fun,” said Shah, noting that most coding events don’t reach out to middle-schoolers but this one saw multiple middle-school teams represented.
The event was the inaugural Arlington Public Schools HSPC (High School Programming Contest). Those who were considering signing up but unsure of their abilities were given the following primer from organizers:
A programming contest is a contest where teams compete to solve short algorithm-design problems as quickly and as accurately as possible.
An easy problem would be: Print, “Hello, World!” and a problem with a higher difficulty level would be: Write a program that detects whether a string of parentheses is properly matched, that is, every ‘(‘ has a uniquely corresponding ‘)’ to the right of it (e.g., so ‘(())’ and ‘()’ are properly matched, but ‘)(‘ and ‘(()’ are not).
Some amount of familiarity with basic programming concepts is recommended, but the competition is open to all.
Zee, the coding lead of the Yorktown robotics team, was handling much of the back-end software development and support for the event. He told ARLnow that he’d deem his efforts a success if “everything worked and nothing failed.”
Spoiler alert: There are always glitches in events like these, but one early on — a problem competitors had with logging in to compete — was moving toward being fixed as pizzas were delivered to give the teams sustenance for the hours ahead.
Computer-coding competitions are specialized endeavors. Those who don’t know their Python from their Java (the two coding languages being used), including a reporter observing the proceedings, were left to nod along, feigning understanding, as the teams went to work solving problems and submitting them to an online judging program.
Participants typically worked out coding solutions the old-fashioned way (pencil and paper) and were allowed one laptop per team to upload their work for scoring. There was no access to phones or Internet for support.
Teams weren’t penalized for wrong answers, and the middle-school teams were able to ask for “hints” when they became stuck.
Watching the proceedings were Jeff Elkner and Chris Jones, computer-science instructors at the Career Center.
Both gave credit to students for getting the competition off the ground.
“They did everything,” said Elkner, who has been taking teens to coding competitions for years.
Jones said it was “incredible, so cool” to see the competition come together.
“They did an amazing job. We’re delighted,” he said.
Levin, Shah and Zee all said they developed a passion for coding between the ages of about 8 and 11. But Smith said that even if one doesn’t doesn’t plan to make a career of it, knowledge of computer coding is something all students should have.
“Coding is an important skill, a tool you can apply to anything,” he said. “Everyone can benefit.”
“Our world is the 21st-century world,” Elkner added. Coding is a chance to “get better connected to your world,” he said.
