On March 22nd, 2018, members of the Coding Club were presented with this year’s task for the Annual Coding Competition. Our task was presented by Mrs. Bucciarelli who needed a way for students to sign up for the library online and also easy for her to store sign-up information. The competition was sponsored by Mr. Frank Orzo ’64, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, who is also a successful computer software developer and business owner of his own company, Orzo & Associates. Ms. Pirovolikos provided us with the guidelines, the requirements from our programs and a deadline for the presentation of our projects on April 18th. The first place winner would receive $100 while second place would win $50. The participants of this year’s competition were Kyle Burnett, Pythagore Charles, Andrew Henkel and Tanner Treasure.
The challenge was to create a computer program that would do the following: a Library sign-up form, a spreadsheet that stores student names, IDs, and preferred class periods, as well as an admin page to keep track of attendance. The program would cross reference a database of authorized library attendees and enable the user to store and print information.
Kyle and Pythagore worked in a team since they were new to coding. They presented a website that displayed a background design, a sign-up that had names, IDs and period numbers as required fields, and a timed page that would close after a certain amount of time. Tanner used HTML and PHP and ran the code he wrote in an online interpreter for testing the non-server related aspects of the program. Tanner’s prototype was able to accept names, IDs and periods; the output was visible on an administrator page. Andrew programmed in Python, a popular and versatile programing language today, and utilized Flask web framework. His prototype was a sign-up form that required the school email, stored the information in an admin page and created an editable chart with period limits on students. It also showed which period was still available to the student. The most common display approach among the presented projects was HTML.
These programs didn’t come without their own problems. For example, Tanner, Kyle, and Pythagore had issues getting a php page set up which would take the information submitted and make it available to Mrs.Bucciarelli on another page.
On April 18th each contestant presented their prototype to our honored judges: Mr. Orzo, Mrs.Bucciarelli, as well as Mr. Arthur Louise, the President of Holy Cross High School Alumni Association. Andrew won $100 for First Place. Tanner and the team of Pythagore and Kyle tied for Second Place. Each participant was encouraged to continue their efforts. Mr. Orzo advised the students on how they could market our programs. The Coding Club would like to thank Mr. Orzo, Ms. Pirovolikos, Mrs.Bucciarelli, Mr. Louise for the support and encouragement as we made our programs. The judges’ guidance provided students insight on how real-world programming has to meet the criteria of human clients.
By Kyle Burnett, Pythagore Charles, Andrew Henkel and Tanner Treasure