Last year, junior Noam Klein noticed that CESJDS didn’t offer a Coding Club, and when he pitched the idea to junior Eli Cashon, Cashon eagerly agreed to co-found the club. With STEM and Programming teacher Hadley Steelman as sponsor, the Coding Club was born.
This year, however, the Coding Club is taking on new challenges, and has progressed into a more coherent and diligent club.
“We completely changed how we do it this year. It used to be [that] we hang out, everyone works on their personal coding project and asks us their questions,” Cashon said. “But this year, we’re doing it much more formal[ly]. We’re joining competitions, and we’re actually training people in the specific areas that we need for the competitions.”
Every Thursday during CT in room 402D, the Coding Club meets to learn and improve their coding skills, especially python coding, and to work toward a coding competition later in January. The American Computer Science League (ACSL) coding competition is based in the Python programming language, so Cashon and Klein are working with the students and teaching them to familiarize themselves with the material needed for the competition as well as coding basics in general.
ACSL is a difficult competition that challenges students’ programming skills as well as problem-solving skills.
“There’s two parts to [coding competitions],” Klein said. “There’s the short problems, which is stuff about coding concepts … And then there is a cut problem where they give you a problem, [and] they tell you to code the solution.”
But the club is not only about the competitions. Klein and Cashon encourage anyone who needs help in a project either individual or work that is part of the class to come in and receive help and feedback. They are also open to help anyone who needs help coding, whether it be for a class or for fun.
“It’s sort of like a coding lab as well, where we just help people who have coding questions,” Klein said.
The Coding Club is a fun outlet for students to grow their coding skills in an environment in which they can be creative, Klein said.
“Everyone should join Coding Club because knowing how to code is an extremely valuable skill, even if you don’t plan on pursuing a career in it,” Klein said in an email. “Plus, everyone can join regardless of coding skill or experience. We’re here to help everybody learn and have fun.”
