On Wednesday, Nov. 6 five students from the Java computer programming classes at East will travel to the 22nd annual Kansas State University High School Programming Contest. According to senior Matt Nestler, this competition is similar to a mathletics competition.
The students receive a packet with the problems inside of it. They are then given a set amount of time in order to solve each problem. When they are done, the students ask a judge to check their work. They receive points based on how long it took them to complete the problem and after multiple rounds, the points are added up to determine the winner.
These problems are either math or word-based questions that students must figure and then use the Java programming language to create a program. In general, students spend about half of the time figuring out the math on the problem and the other half writing their program.
Competitors compete in teams of between two and four students. This will be Nestler’s third year entering in the competition. East will be sending two teams this year, one consisting of Nestler and Henry Recker and the other Jack Stevens, Logan Benyen and Will Brownlee.
As this will be Nestler’s third year entering in this competition, he hopes to improve from previous years.
“I haven’t officially placed before,” Nestler said. “So that would be nice. The team with me and Henry, he is pretty smart with math and stuff so I think I would like to get in the top three this year.”
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