Huge congratulations to Studio student Ben Houghton, who’s a grand winner in the Google Code-in competition.
The competition is designed to introduce students between the ages of 13 and 17 to open source software development. Open source organisations chosen by Google provide a list of tasks for students during a seven-week contest period, assigning each task a mentors from the organisation. Students earn prizes for their successful completion of the tasks, choosing from categories including coding, documentation, training, outreach, research, quality assurance and design.
This year, 3,566 students from 76 countries completed 20,840 tasks with 29 open source organisations. Ben is one of 58 grand prize winners who’ll enjoy a four-day trip to Google’s campus in North Carolina to meet Google engineers.
Ben passed on massive thanks to the mentors in his organisation, including Urbanecm, Ebe123, Gopa, Andre and Ammarpad, who were incredibly helpful. He says: “Winning Google Code-in 2019 is a massive opportunity for me personally, and I still can’t quite believe it happened. I can’t help but have a feeling of imposters’ syndrome (as I think it is called, anyway) at the fact that I won. Massive thanks to both the Google Open-Source Programs Office and Wikimedia for letting this happen. Also to my school, which has been constantly supporting me since I joined, and without it I probably wouldn’t have been motivated in the first place to take part.
“Open source is a really great thing,” he continues. “Collaboration and sharing information with the world (especially on the internet, which coincidentally is Wikimedia’s mission) are things to be proud of doing, especially in this day and age.”
Enda Carey is sector skills champion at the Studio. He says: “We’re really proud of Ben’s achievement. All of our students are well motivated in choosing extra curricular activities. I’m sure a trip to Google’s campus will inspire him to take the next step towards a career in tech.”
For more information on the Studio’s design and technology-focused curriculum, visit one of our open evenings…