Evan Krohn, Diego Candia, Nathan Dinh, and David Teng took first place in the regional Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) team programming challenge. They will advance to the state level in April in Montgomery.

Mrs. Rountree described the challenge. “The students are in teams of 2 to 4 students based on grade level. Level 4 is ninth and tenth grade. Level 5 is eleventh and twelfth grade.”

“The students are given 4 programming problems with two hours to complete them. They are only allowed to use one computer. At the end of the two hours, the judges check their programs. The scoring is based upon correctness of output using many different sets of data, design, efficiency, and error-handling. I always tell my students that the judges will try to ‘break’ your programs by using some strange inputs you may not have considered. The team with the highest score advances to the state level,” Roundtree said.

Computer science is a growing field with implications in many different industries. The Balance states, “Creativity is essential for those computer science majors who hope to come up with the latest app or technology gadget. Given the rapid rate of change within technology, computer science majors need to have a thirst for learning to keep up with the latest developments.”

Mrs. Rountree added, “What is noteworthy about this team is that they could probably compete against the older teams and still win. Most of them already know more languages than I do and are extremely creative. They are very good at thinking outside the box.”

If you’re interested in joining the computer science competition team, you can add computer science classes to your registration form or join the Computer Science Programming Club.