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Dyn hosts high school programmers for 'Hack-A-Palooza' competition [The New Hampshire Union Leader, Manchester](New Hampshire Union Leader Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 01--MANCHESTER -- Some of New Hampshire's aspiring software wizards were racing to resolve nine programming problems while beating the competition as well as the clock on Friday. Students huddled around tables while working out strategies and writing code for the series of problems designed to get progressively more difficult. Internet performance company Dyn hosted the event at its headquarters in the Millyard, where 12 teams of students from nine high schools got a tour of the facility, two presentations about the industry from Dyn employees and then got to work in the competition, dubbed "Hack-A-Palooza." "It's not just a programming contest. The whole idea is to get them excited about technology," said Ali Rafieymehr, dean of the company's Dyn University and director of instructional design. The team from Nashua South High School won first place in the competition, with Bow High School taking second place and Milford High School coming in third. There was no shortage of excitement among the students, who shared the duties of coming up with the best approach for each problem, then typing the potential answer into a laptop designated for each team. There was a constant clatter of computer keys clicking away and the occasional "Yes!" when a complicated step was resolved. "The problems have been pretty challenging," said Kenneth Nero, a sophomore from Milford High School. Nero was the designated "manager" on a team of three Milford students who were contending for the lead at about the halfway point Friday. Nero, fellow sophomore Evan Rysdam and senior Jason Magri had successfully navigated through four of the questions and were the first in getting one of them correct, which earned them a bonus in the scoring system. Rysdam said one of the biggest difficulties the team faced was typing on the unfamiliar laptop without triggering the keyboard mouse function. The problems themselves, he said, were challenging but solvable. "It's a nice environment. It's a little more formal than I thought it would be," Rysdam said. "I was expecting one of those things like 'It's Halloween -- code something.'" While many Dyn employees, including at least one of the judges, were in costume, most of the high schoolers were strictly business in the high-tech knowledge showdown. At a table just behind the Milford crew, students from Nashua High School South were also among the top teams in contention after the first hour. The students were accompanied by teachers and advisers, who were able to watch the competition but could not offer assistance."It builds their confidence. It builds their skills," Nashua South teacher Lorna Spargo said. "They want to see, 'Can I do it? And if I can, can I do it better than somebody else?'"Spargo was thumbing through the pages of problems and noted that the answers required logical reasoning and problem-solving to transform a thought via a series of steps into the proper code. "If students can learn computational thinking in even a simple computer science class, then they can approach problem solving in any subject," she said. Rafieymehr said this was the first competition Dyn has hosted for high school students. The company has also hosted a college competition known as the Hackademy. [email protected] ------ ___ (c)2014 The New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.) Visit The New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.) at www.unionleader.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |