K-State computer coding contest

Ayana Jones, Staff Writer

The Kansas-State University Engineering and Computer Science department hosted a computer programming contest where they invited teams of students, from all different high schools, to compete in a coding contest. A total of 11 Manhattan High students all went to take part in this.

The students started out the day at 9 a.m., with checking in and setting up, and then were given two rounds of problems that got increasingly harder as they progressed. Many teams didn’t manage to solve them in time. 

Career Tech Education Coordinator Chris Holborn took the students to the coding contest.

“They’ve been doing it for a number of years,” Holborn said. “Teams are presented with problems and they try to develop a code to solve the problem.”

For most of the students who went, this was their first time going and they enjoyed it.

“It was a good learning experience,” senior Antonine Riddick said. “We had five or six [problems] we had to solve in a specific time, usually in 30 minutes.”

After the first two rounds of problems the students went to Kramer Dining Hall, which then followed up in the final round, which had two, and by 2:30 p.m. the event was over.

“[The goal was to show] what they’re learning in class can be applied to post secondary education,” Holborn said.

The problems students were tasked to solve were similar to a math class word problems and the teams worked together to apply their coding skills to solve it.

“I learned to plan things out before I put it into code,” senior David Sosanya said. 

Manhattan High usually competes in the contest every year. 

“The competition was a little smaller this year but it was very heavily attended by schools in the [Kansas City] area,” Holborn said.