Tag Archives: coding

Grow your coding skills and your confidence – Coding Practice with Kick Start

Posted by Julia DeLorenzo, Program Manager, Coding Competitions

Coding Practice with Kick Start is a four-day practice session where you'll have the chance to learn more about the Kick Start platform, utilize starter code to help frame your solutions, and interact with Google engineers.

It’s not a timed round and there is no scoreboard! No one else will be able to view your scores from the session. This is just for fun and a great way to hone your coding skills, and get better acquainted with Kick Start.

So, why should you join the session? We’re glad you asked!

About Coding Practice with Kick Start

The problems you'll see in Coding Practice with Kick Start range in difficulty. The concepts covered in these problems align very closely with concepts covered in introductory CS courses like Data Structures and Algorithms, and topics you may encounter in Google interviews.

You can solve the problems in any order you like. Looking at a problem does not start any timers, so feel free to read all of them at the start of the session, and then solve them in the order of your choice. We also provide starter code at the top of each problem statement to get you started with your solution.

Stuck on a problem? Don’t worry! You can use the “Ask a question” button on the problem overview page.

At the end of the session, tune in for a livestream where Kick Start engineers will walk through each of the problems featured during the round!

Grow your coding skills and your confidence

Still need to be convinced to give Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 3 a try?

Hear from some past participants how Coding Practice with Kick Start helped them along their competitive programming journey.

Session 2 Participants: Tell us why you enjoyed your experience!

Balla says:

"At first I used to think that the Kick Start coding rounds were very tough and I couldn't solve them. But the level of the initial questions are such that it boosts us to give it a try, and increases our confidence level. I feel that this is the best part that every coder hopes for. After attempting the session, I felt like I could solve the problems if I worked a little harder.

My favorite problem in Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 2 is ‘Irregular Expressions’. The problem is very interesting; I couldn't write up the logic, but it made me think a lot. It's the best problem I faced in the round.”

Mbalire says:

“I personally had problems with test samples not catering for some cases, and that I failed to understand the questions. The answers and support from the Google engineers during Coding Practice with Kick Start was good. I felt as if different people at Google were reading my code and seeing my development, and that boosted my confidence.

While solving the problem, I could see my own development while creating my own solution. I hope to do much more and participate in the coming Kick Start competition rounds. It may be because I started programming this year or because most of the code I know is from my research, but getting these algorithms right has been a huge accomplishment for me.

My favorite problem was ‘Building Palindromes’ from Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 2.”

Nandini says:

“Coding Practice with Kick Start was very engaging and I had a lot of fun. It reminded me how much I enjoy computer science and math and solving problems!

My favorite problem from the past coding practice session has been the 'Building Palindromes' problem. This is because I had fun trying to come up with an optimal solution to this problem and it pushed me to learn new techniques for optimizing my solution: prefixing sums/pre-calculation.

I also really enjoyed solving the ‘Parcels’ problem since it involved search algorithms which I love! I found that it was the right amount of ‘challenging’ to keep me thinking about it all day. Thanks, Google!"

Joining Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 3

With the third and final session for the year coming up, we encourage you to join us. Coding Practice with Kick Start is the perfect opportunity to practice and grow your skills without the pressure of a public scoreboard or timed round.

Learn new skills, grow your confidence as a coder, and we’ll see you in one of our upcoming Kick Start rounds.

We hope you'll give it a try! → https://goo.gle/codingpracticewks

Grow your coding skills and your confidence – Coding Practice with Kick Start

Posted by Julia DeLorenzo, Program Manager, Coding Competitions

Coding Practice with Kick Start is a four-day practice session where you'll have the chance to learn more about the Kick Start platform, utilize starter code to help frame your solutions, and interact with Google engineers.

It’s not a timed round and there is no scoreboard! No one else will be able to view your scores from the session. This is just for fun and a great way to hone your coding skills, and get better acquainted with Kick Start.

So, why should you join the session? We’re glad you asked!

About Coding Practice with Kick Start

The problems you'll see in Coding Practice with Kick Start range in difficulty. The concepts covered in these problems align very closely with concepts covered in introductory CS courses like Data Structures and Algorithms, and topics you may encounter in Google interviews.

You can solve the problems in any order you like. Looking at a problem does not start any timers, so feel free to read all of them at the start of the session, and then solve them in the order of your choice. We also provide starter code at the top of each problem statement to get you started with your solution.

Stuck on a problem? Don’t worry! You can use the “Ask a question” button on the problem overview page.

At the end of the session, tune in for a livestream where Kick Start engineers will walk through each of the problems featured during the round!

Grow your coding skills and your confidence

Still need to be convinced to give Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 3 a try?

Hear from some past participants how Coding Practice with Kick Start helped them along their competitive programming journey.

Session 2 Participants: Tell us why you enjoyed your experience!

Balla says:

"At first I used to think that the Kick Start coding rounds were very tough and I couldn't solve them. But the level of the initial questions are such that it boosts us to give it a try, and increases our confidence level. I feel that this is the best part that every coder hopes for. After attempting the session, I felt like I could solve the problems if I worked a little harder.

My favorite problem in Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 2 is ‘Irregular Expressions’. The problem is very interesting; I couldn't write up the logic, but it made me think a lot. It's the best problem I faced in the round.”

Mbalire says:

“I personally had problems with test samples not catering for some cases, and that I failed to understand the questions. The answers and support from the Google engineers during Coding Practice with Kick Start was good. I felt as if different people at Google were reading my code and seeing my development, and that boosted my confidence.

While solving the problem, I could see my own development while creating my own solution. I hope to do much more and participate in the coming Kick Start competition rounds. It may be because I started programming this year or because most of the code I know is from my research, but getting these algorithms right has been a huge accomplishment for me.

My favorite problem was ‘Building Palindromes’ from Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 2.”

Nandini says:

“Coding Practice with Kick Start was very engaging and I had a lot of fun. It reminded me how much I enjoy computer science and math and solving problems!

My favorite problem from the past coding practice session has been the 'Building Palindromes' problem. This is because I had fun trying to come up with an optimal solution to this problem and it pushed me to learn new techniques for optimizing my solution: prefixing sums/pre-calculation.

I also really enjoyed solving the ‘Parcels’ problem since it involved search algorithms which I love! I found that it was the right amount of ‘challenging’ to keep me thinking about it all day. Thanks, Google!"

Joining Coding Practice with Kick Start Session 3

With the third and final session for the year coming up, we encourage you to join us. Coding Practice with Kick Start is the perfect opportunity to practice and grow your skills without the pressure of a public scoreboard or timed round.

Learn new skills, grow your confidence as a coder, and we’ll see you in one of our upcoming Kick Start rounds.

We hope you'll give it a try! → https://goo.gle/codingpracticewks

GSoC 2022 accepted Contributors announced!

May is here and we’re pleased to announce the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) Contributors for 2022. Our 196 mentoring organizations have spent the last few weeks making the difficult decisions on which applicants they will be mentoring this year as GSoC Contributors


Some notable results from this year’s application period
  • Over 4,000 applicants from 96 countries
  • 5,155 proposals submitted
  • 1,209 GSoC contributors accepted from 62 countries
  • 1,882 mentors and organization administrators

For the next few weeks our GSoC 2022 Contributors will be actively engaging with their new open source community and learning the ins and outs of how their new community works. Mentors will help guide them through the documentation and processes the community uses as well as helping the GSoC Contributors with planning their milestones and projects for the summer. This Community Bonding period helps familiarize the GSoC Contributors with the languages and tools they will need to successfully complete their projects. Coding begins June 13th and for most folks will wrap up September 5th, however this year GSoC Contributors can request a longer coding period wrapping up their projects by mid November.

Thank you to all the applicants who reached out to our mentoring organizations to learn more about the work they do and for the time they spent crafting their project proposals. We hope you all learned more about open source and maybe even found a community you want to contribute to even outside of GSoC. Staying connected with the community or reaching out to other organizations is a great way to set the stage for future opportunities. Open source communities are always looking for new, excited contributors to bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the table. We hope you connect with an open source community or apply to a future GSoC.

There are many changes to this 18th year of GSoC and we are excited to see how our GSoC Contributors and mentoring organizations take advantage of these adjustments. A big thank you to all our mentors and organization administrators who make this program so special.

GSoC Contributors—have fun this summer and keep learning! Your mentors and community members have dozens and in some cases, hundreds of years of experience, let them share their knowledge with you and help you become awesome open source contributors!

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Open Source

Google Summer of Code 2022 is open for mentor organization applications!

We are excited to announce that open source projects and organizations can now apply to participate as mentoring organizations in the 2022 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. Applications for organizations will close Monday, February 21 at 10am PT.

As 2022 begins, so does our 18th edition of Google Summer of Code! With our new updates to the program, we look forward to welcoming not just students, but new and beginner open source contributors over 18 years old into our GSoC community. With increased flexibility in the length of the projects—now offering 175 and 350-hour projects—and the ability to extend the program from the standard 12 weeks to 22 weeks, we hope to spur the interest of more potential GSoC contributors.

Does your open source project want to learn more about becoming a mentor organization? Visit the program site and read the mentor guide to learn what it means to be a mentoring organization and how to prepare your community (hint: have plenty of excited mentors and well thought out project ideas!).

We welcome all types of organizations and are very eager to involve first-timers with a 2022 goal of welcoming 30+ new orgs into GSoC. We encourage new organizations to get a referral from experienced organizations that think they would be a good fit to participate in GSoC.

The open source projects that participate in GSoC as mentor organizations do all kinds of interesting work in security, cloud, development tools, science, medicine, data, and media for example. Projects can be relatively new (about 2 years old) to well established projects that started over 20 years ago. We welcome open source projects big and small and everything in between.

One thing to remember is that open source projects wishing to apply need to have a solid community. While you don’t have to have 50+ community members, the project also can’t have as few as 3 people; the goal of GSoC is to bring new contributors into communities and there should be an established community for them to join.

You can apply to be a mentor organization for GSoC starting today on the program site. The deadline to apply is February 21st at 10am PT. We will publicly announce the organizations chosen for GSoC 2022 on March 7th.

Please visit the program site for more information on how to apply and review the detailed timeline for important deadlines. We also encourage you to check out the Mentor Guide and our short video on why open source projects are excited to be a part of the GSoC program.

Good luck to all open source mentoring organization applicants!

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Open Source

Inviting students to participate in Code to Learn competition 2020

COVID has had a significant impact on how students engage with hands-on learning and poses additional responsibilities for parents and teachers to engage their students in meaningful learning experiences. 


Today,  we are launching the seventh edition of the Code to Learn competition as a means to immerse students in creative and computational thinking, along with building their skills in programming.


Students from Class 5 to 12 from any school in India can register through their parents or teachers to show their coding genius using exciting tools like Scratch, App Inventor and Google AutoML to build games, animation, android apps and/or their own machine learning applications; without writing even a single line of code!


Over the years, Computer Science and Programming has evolved and become one of the strongest means of solving real-life problems. The Code to Learn competition provides a platform for kids to learn the basics of coding and build a stronger foundation in Computer Science. In a fun and engaging way,  we aim to inspire students to use technology to solve problems around them.


In line with this objective, we have been running the Code to Learn competition successfully for school students in India for the last six years. The program has also been adopted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India under the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan.  


Artificial Intelligence has become a strong enabler to solve many challenging problems of society. Google has put AI to use to solve some of the most pressing issues, from helping predict early blindness to giving timely updates on floods in India. We have a special AI track for class 9 -12 students where they use Google’s existing Machine Learning models to create projects with a problem statement and a data set of their choice. Students define a problem and select any open dataset or create their own (images or text) and train a pre-trained machine learning model to create their own Machine Learning application using Google Cloud AutoML.


Code to Learn concluded successfully in 2019 and witnessed an overwhelming participation of students from across the country with innovative and exciting projects. We saw powerful applications ranging from fun games to applications that help farmers with timely information. In the Artificial Intelligence theme, we received excellent projects where students defined and tried to solve various societal problems like early detection of breast cancer, predicting learning disabilities through images of handwriting and segregating recyclable plastic waste using Computer Vision models.
The competition registrations are now open and parents, teachers or legal guardians can register on behalf of the student on the competition website (g.co/codetolearn). Students from across India can submit their projects by 31st July, 2020. We also have online resources available on our website to learn Scratch, AppInventor and Google Cloud AutoML to get started.


We are very excited about this year's competition, and are looking forward to seeing the innovation and creativity that students will present to us via their projects! For more details, visit our website: g.co/codetolearn.


Code to Learn is co-organized by Google Cloud, ACM India, CS Pathshala, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), IIIT Bangalore. ACM is the worldwide society for scientific and educational computing with an aim to advance Computer Science both as a science (through CS Pathshala) and as a profession. IISc and IIIT Bangalore are research-oriented universities based in Bangalore.


Posted by Divy Thakkar, Research and Education Program Manager, and Ashwani Sharma, Head of Research Operations and University Relations, India, AU/NZ and SEA 

A milestone to celebrate: 10 years of GCI!

 
This year we celebrated the best of program milestones—10 years of bringing together 13-17 year old students from around the world into open source software development with our Google Code-in (GCI) contest. The contest wrapped up in January with our largest numbers ever; 3,566 students from 76 countries completed an impressive 20,840 tasks during the 7-week contest!

Students spent their time working online with mentors from 29 open source organizations that provided help to answer questions and guide students throughout the contest. The students wrote code, edited and created documentation, designed UI elements and logos, and conducted research. Additionally, they developed videos to teach others about open source software and found (and fixed!) hundreds of bugs.

Overview

  • 2,605 students completed three or more tasks (earning a Google Code-in 2019 t-shirt)
  • 18.5% of students were girls
  • 79.8% of students were first time participants in GCI (same percentage as in 2018- weird!)
  • We saw very large increases in the number of students from Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan.

Student Age


Participating Schools

School NameNumber of Student ParticipantsCountry
Dunman High School138Singapore
Liceul Teoretic ''Aurel Vlaicu''47Romania
Indus E.M High School46India
Sacred Heart Convent Senior Secondary School34India
Ananda College29Sri Lanka

Students from 1,900 schools (yes, exactly 1,900!) competed in this year’s contest; plus, 273 students were homeschooled. Many students learn about GCI from their friends or teachers and continue to spread the word to their classmates. This year the top five schools that had the most students with completed tasks were:

Countries

The chart below displays the top 10 countries with students who completed at least 1 task.

We are thrilled that Google Code-in was so popular this year!

Thank you again to the people who make this program possible: the 895 mentors—from 59 countries—that guided students through the program and welcomed them into their open source communities.

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Open Source

DevFest 2019: It’s time for Latin America!

DevFest banner Posted by Mariela Altamirano, Community Manager for Latin America with Grant Timmerman, Developer Programs Engineer and Mete Atamel, Developer Advocate

DevFest season is always full of lively surprises with enchanting adventures right around the corner. Sometimes these adventures are big: attending a DevFest in the Caribbean, in the heart of the amazon jungle, or traveling more than 3,000 meters above sea level to discover the beautiful South American highlands. Other times they are small but precious: unlocking a new way of thinking that completely shifts how you code.

October marks the beginning of our DevFest 2019 season in Latin America, where all of these experiences become a reality thanks to the efforts of our communities.

What makes DevFests in LATAM different? Our community is free spirited, eager to explore the natural landscapes we call home, proud of our deep cultural diversity, and energized by our big cities. At the same time, we are connected to the tranquil spirit of our small towns. This year, we hope to reflect this way of life through our 55 official Latin America DevFests.

During the season, Latin America will open its doors to Google Developer Experts, Women Techmakers, Googlers, and other renowned speakers, to exchange ideas on Google products such as Android, TensorFlow, Flutter, Google Cloud Platform. Activities include, hackathons, codelabs and training sessions. This season, we will be joined by Googlers Grant Timmerman and Mete Atamel.

Grant is a Developer Programs Engineer at Google where he works on Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, and other serverless technologies on Google Cloud Platform. He loves open source, Node, and plays the alto saxophone in his spare time. During his time in Latin America, he'll be discussing all things serverless at DevFests and Cloud Summits in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.

Grant Timmerman, developer programs engineer
Mete Atamel, developer advocate

Mete is a Developer Advocate based in London. He focuses on helping developers with Google Cloud. At DevFest Sul in Floripa and other conferences and meetups throughout Brazil in October, he’ll be talking about serverless containers using Knative and Cloud Run. He first visited the region back in 2017 when he visited Sao Paulo

Afterwards, he went to Rio de Janeiro and immediately fell in love with the city, its friendly people and its positive vibe. Since then, he spoke at a number of conferences and meetups in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and always has been impressed with the eagerness of people to learn more.

This year we will be visiting new countries such as Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Honduras, Venezuela and Ecuador that have created their first GDG (Google Developer Group) communities. Most of these new communities are celebrating their first DevFest! We'll also be hosting diversity and inclusion events, so keep an eye out for more details!

We thank everyone for being a part of DevFest and our community.

We hope you join us!

#DevFest

#DevFestLATAM

Find a DevFest near you at g.co/dev/fest/sa

Learn Kotlin Fast with new Kotlin Bootcamp course

Posted by Aleks Haecky, Training Developer & Word Artist, Google+, LinkedIn, Medium

The Kotlin Bootcamp Udacity course is a free, self-paced online course that teaches you the basics of the Kotlin programming language. This introduction to Kotlin was created by Google experts in collaboration with Udacity and is for people who already know how to program.

The Kotlin language lets you create apps in less time, writing less code, and with fewer errors.

This modern object-oriented language offers a strong type system, type inference, null safety, properties, lambdas, extensions, coroutines, higher-order functions, and many other features. Kotlin is so concise that you can create complete data classes with a single line of code.

Kotlin is officially supported for building Android apps, fully interoperates with the Java programming language and libraries, and is included with IntelliJ and Android Studio.

In this course you will learn everything you need to program in Kotlin, including:

  1. Basics: Write Kotlin statements and expressions in the IntelliJ REPL Kotlin interpreter using nullable and non-nullable variables, data types, operators, and control structures.
  2. Functions: Create a main() function, create and call functions with default and variable arguments, pass functions as arguments to filters, program simple lambdas, function types, and compact single-expression functions.
  3. Classes: Create a class with methods and properties. Implement constructors and init(). Learn about inheritance, interfaces, and abstract classes. Use the special purpose classes data, object, enum, and sealed.
  4. Beyond the Basics: Dive deeper into Pairs, collections, and constants. Learn how to write extensions, implement generics, apply annotations, and use labeled breaks.
  5. Functional Manipulation: Explore more about lambdas, higher-order functions, and inline.

You'll learn how to use extension functions to add helpful functionality to existing classes.

Extend built-in types: 

fun Int.print() = println(this)
5.print() // prints 5

Extend Android classes: 

fun Context.toast(text: CharSequence, duration: Int = Toast.LENGTH_SHORT): Toast {
   return Toast.makeText(this, text, duration).apply { show() }
}
toast("Hello Toast")

Extend your own classes: 

class AquariumPlant(
       val color: String)

fun AquariumPlant.print() =
       println("Pretty Aquarium Plant")

val plant = AquariumPlant("green")
plant.print()
// prints -> Pretty Aquarium Plant

When you've completed the course, you will be able to create programs in Kotlin, taking advantage of the features and capabilities that make Kotlin unique.

The course is available free, online at Udacity; take it in your own time at your own pace.

Go learn how to build apps with less code at https://www.udacity.com/course/ud9011.

Developing mobile apps with the Android Basics Nanodegree

Posted by Shanea King-Roberson, Lead Program Manager, Google Developer Training

When empowered with the right CS skills, we believe that each person can use technology to accelerate change towards a better world that they envision. So in partnership with Udacity, we’re launching the Android Basics Nanodegree: a free online curriculum for building basic Android apps. No previous programming experience required. Anyone —of any skill level— can access the content, take it at their own pace, and learn how to create Android apps. All of the individual courses that make up this Nanodegree are available at no charge at udacity.com/google.

Included in this launch is the Android Basics Facilitator’s Guide, which is an instruction manual that enables students, parents, and teachers to conduct in-person study groups via a blended learning model. This guide can be used in a variety of formats, adjusted for style or preference. Facilitators can vary the number of days, the length, the specific topics taught and more.

Curriculum
The curriculum offers a step-by-step approach on building several different types of Android apps. Through a “just-in-time” approach, students are actively exposed to fundamental computer science concepts, continuously learning as they build more complex apps. Along the way, students become familiar with the Java programming language — from variables and data types to more advanced object-oriented principles, HTTP networking concepts, and how to store data in a SQLite database.

Students can immediately start building layouts for Android apps using the XML language. They use Android Studio, the same official tool that professional Android developers use to write their apps. Students learn important software development skills such as how to identify and fix unexpected issues, read code for an existing app, and how to search for information on their own. They will also hear from professional developers, who are applying the same concepts from the classroom to popular apps like Google Play and Gmail.

Through each of the 6 courses, students gain first-hand experience by building apps designed for real-world experiences like placing orders in a coffee shop, tracking pets in a shelter, teaching vocabulary words from the Native American Miwok tribe, or reporting recent earthquakes in the world. By the end, students will have built an entire portfolio of apps to share that show off all their hard work.
Upon completing the Android Basics Nanodegree, students can continue learning with the Career-track Android Nanodegree (for intermediate developers). The first 50 participants to finish the Android Basics Nanodegree have a chance to win a scholarship for the Career-track Android Nanodegree. Additional details and eligibility requirements can be found here.

Students
Students can enroll in the individual courses here. We recommend signing up with friends and classmates, to create a support group for sharing work and asking questions. In addition, students can sign up for the full Nanodegree on Udacity to gain access to coaches who can help them stay on track, provide career counseling and guidance on their projects. They can receive a certificate upon completion for a fee.

Students who have gone through the course are building incredible apps that put their new skills to work. For example, Arpy Vanyan created the "ROP Tutorial" app to raise awareness of a potentially blinding eye disorder called Retinopathy of Prematurity that can affect newborn babies.
The ROP Tutorial app, created by student Arpy Vanyan, raises awareness of Retinopathy of Prematurity in newborns
Or Fadli Wilihandarwo who built “Pasienia,” an app connecting patients with the same disease in order to offer support and open communication.
Paisienia is a health support group app, created by student Fadli Wilihandarwo
Parents and Guardians 
Android development can be also be a fun family activity, with parents learning right alongside their children. But even if parents or guardians don’t have a background - or prior interest - in this topic, research shows that their encouragement can help motivate children to continue persisting through the course.

Meet Wendy Bravo and her 11-year-old daughter Katia. They started taking the Android Basics courses together, which sparked Katia’s desire to learn more about programming. It was difficult to find local in-person STEM courses for Katia’s age, but with the Android Basics courses, she and her mother were both able to learn.

Teachers and Sponsors
Teachers who want to inspire their students to learn CS through Android app development can use the online videos in their classroom to supplement existing lesson plans. Suggestions for in-person classroom activities to complement the online coursework are included in the facilitator’s guide, along with methods of adjusting the format. Teachers can also sponsor study groups during or after school to encourage students to complete the course content together.

Check out the curriculum or enroll in the Android Basics Nanodegree program. With this complete learning path, you can teach yourself to become a technology entrepreneur, and best yet, build cool Android apps for yourself, your community, and even the world.

Register today for Google Code Jam 2016

Posted by Chelsea Lax, on behalf of the Google Code Jam Team


Google Code Jam 2016 is here, and we’re calling all coders from around the globe to put their skills to the test in multiple online rounds of intense, algorithmic puzzles.* The contest kicks off with the Online Qualification Round in just a few days on April 8 at 23:00 UTC, so register today!


Back for its 13th year, the competition will be bigger and better than ever with the return and expansion of the Distributed Code Jam track, which we introduced in 2015 to allow coders to solve problems in a distributed environment. Finalists will compete for the titles of both Code Jam and Distributed Code Jam Champion at the World Finals held at Google New York on August 5-6 (see the full schedule here).

We’re looking for all programmers - from returning champions to first-time competitors - who want to take a stab at practicing their programming skills in the contest arena to solve some of the most challenging problems out there. For those needing an introduction to Google Code Jam or simply a refresher, review the Quick-Start Guide, try your hand at past problems, and check out our new Tutorials section for an in-depth look into solving puzzles.

In case you need further convincing, registering for Code Jam gives you the chance to win grand prizes of $15,000 (Code Jam) or $5,000 (Distributed Code Jam), the esteemed World Champion titles, and/or a limited edition Code Jam T-shirt if you’re in the top-scoring 1000 contestants from Code Jam Round 2 or the top-scoring 500 contestants from Distributed Code Jam Round 1. Take a peek at the 2016 T-shirt design, which creatively depicts our World Finals location using 27 lines of code in 25 different languages written by 26 different 2015 Code Jammers.

To better understand the magic of Google Code Jam, watch highlights from last year’s World Finals in Seattle, or tune into the entire live streamed event. For more updates and to keep in touch, join our G+ community or follow along with us on Twitter.

We hope to see you in contest arena during the Online Qualification Round. Are you up for the challenge? Register today at g.co/codejam.

P.S. Don’t forget to share the Code Jam 2016 flyer with your friends, classmates and communities!

*Per the Terms and Conditions, you may participate in the Contest only if you are 13 years of age or older at the time of registration, but you must be 18 years of age or older at the time of registration to be eligible for the onsite final round; if not, you are only eligible to win a t-shirt.