Photo L-R: Henry Hudson, Ewan Robson, Kai Swanborough, Eddie Hasdell (back), George Winter, Zac Stewart and Harry Chacksfield
Gifted and talented computer scientists represented Pocklington School in The Perse Coding Team Challenge, a national competition to find the UK’s top school programming team.
The Second, Third and Fourth Year students, all members of our Byte Club, competed in two teams of four in a timed one-hour coding challenge under strict exam conditions.
The teams were: Pock A - Henry Hudson (2nd Yr); Zac Stewart (2nd Yr); Harry Chacksfield (3rd Yr); Ewan Robson (3rd Yr). Pock B - Kai Swanborough (2nd Yr); George Winter (3rd Yr); Eddie Hasdell (4th Yr); Ben Wilkinson (4th Yr).
Manique Wilson, Computing teacher, said: “We like to stretch and challenge our students in Computer Science at Pocklington School and the teams have certainly learned a great deal by taking part in the Perse Challenge. Judging by their faces, they found it a super experience.”
The students have been working hard during Byte Club to code in Python and VB.Net to create solutions to some demanding questions. The club is ably supported by U6 Computer Science student Cubby Wilson, who has devised many a challenge to test their coding skill.
Mrs Wilson said: “There is a great camaraderie amongst the boys who all seem very intent to make Computer Science a key subject in their future option choices. There is a real buzz when a piece of code produces the exact, desired result and we often hear the “YES” moment in the lab!”
The teams await the results of the competition, organised by The Perse School, Cambridge. Teams are competing to win the Braben Cup which is sponsored by Dr David Braben , game developer and founder of Frontier Developments.
The Perse Coding Team Challenge offers progressively harder questions. If you are intrigued, then take a look at a basic Level 1 challenge:
PERFECT CIPHER
Jemima tries to develop a cipher, which would be very difficult to decode. She finally has an idea! If she substitutes every letter of the message with ‘E’ (the most common letter in the English language), she is sure nobody will be able to decipher it!
INPUT: A single word
OUTPUT: Output the message encoded using Jemima’s cipher
EXAMPLE INPUT: PERSECODING
EXAMPLE OUTPUT: EEEEEEEEEEE
Hint from Cubby: “This is easy. The solution is only 2 lines long and you need to use the len function in Python!”
