DigiCode junior programming contest announces winners

The annual junior contest of applied programming DigiCode 2019 has taken place for the 5th successive year at the American University of Armenia.

This time it gathered over 300 participants from all Armenian marzes and Samtskhe-Javakheti, a region in Georgia with large Armenian population. 55 contestants reached the final, where again all marzes were represented.

“Our goal is to raise a generation of creators, not consumers, give an opportunity to people who lead through their creative work. I played my first computer game somewhere between 1987 and 1989, and it was inferior by level and quality compared to the games that young game makers develop today. Kids today create games that we, the 90s’ children, could only dream about. You don’t have to start building your future when you turn 18 to achieve something by 25. You have to start at the age of 12 and at 16 have what you would have had by 25, and at 25 you can strive for bigger achievements,” said Ucom Director General Hayk Yesayan.

Student of “Armath” engineering lab of the Artsakh Information Technologies Center (AITC) Kristian Aleksanyan won the contest in the under-13s group with his game “Armenian soldier” and students of Sevan high school Arayik Gabrielyan and Shahen Hakobyan won in the age group of 13 and older with the game they developed jointly, the “Unknown Soldier”.

Masis Basic School №1 student Edgar Harutyunyan with his “3D rectangular rotation” project won in “Best algorithm solution” with K-turtle nomination.

The winners of “Best interactive animation” among students under 13 and older are respectively Torgom Misakyan from Gandzak Secondary School № 1 with his “Audio laboratory” project and Aram Khachatryan from Vanadzor Basic School № 19 with his “Happy physics”.

Vardenis Secondary School № 1 student Tigran Khachtryan with his “Owl” game won is “Best drafting and design” nomination.

Gyumri Endanik Youth Creative Center student from Armath lab Sahak Sahakyan with his “Sahak’s bot” won in “Device integration” with Python nomination. The second and third place in the same nomination were taken by Roman Mkhitaryan from Talin High School with his “CarinSpider” project and Yerevan My Love center student from Armath Grigor Maghzanyan with his “RFID camera security” project.

The winners were awarded with monetary prizes from Ucom. Encouraging especially the knowledge of Python among Armath students, Ucom presented tablets to the best three of them in that nomination.

The American University of Armenia provided monetary prizes to team leaders of the winners.

DigiCode contest discovers talented school children with knowledge of engineering throughout Armenia and encourages them to turn from game consumers to game developers. DigiCode has been held in Armenia by Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE) since 2015. The general sponsor of the event is Ucom, the organizer-American University of Armenia.