This spring, the high school's Longhorn Coders team earned first place in the United States Virtual Advanced Division at the annual Lockheed Martin Code Quest Coding Competition. The competition, hosting upwards of 1,800 participants, had teams of two to three students compete using their programming skills against a series of challenges across 40 divisions. The Longhorn Coders is composed of seniors lan Coutinho, Jeremy Hsu, and Christopher Yu.
"They gave us 25 problems to solve, and I learned to apply my coding skills to real-life situations," said Hsu. "The competition provides different question formats, so it has experiences that enhance technical skills and foster teamwork among competitors. The questions were fun and competitive, and ...I did lots of real-world applications." Lasting two and a half hours, teams worked to earn as many points as possible and be crowned champions.
Preparation for the competition occurred year-round, with participants enrolled in courses such as AP Computer Science that foster coding experience. "I want to become successful through computer science and programming, and taking computer science courses and competing in competitions has helped me improve my coding skills," said Hsu. In addition to the preparation, the competition required mental strategy. "From the beginning, there was no change in my emotion; I was confident and knew what to do the entire time," said Hsu. " started off in the lead, in my element, and I ended in first place."
The three competitors noted that the competition gave them leadership and teamwork experience. They are eager to apply the skills and knowledge gained from their time at the high school's club as they progress throughout their careers. "For my next goal, I want to finish all the problems on LeetCode la coding platform) and do well at Penn State," said Hsu.