Nine students from the Computer Science team will travel to Houston this Saturday, March 3 to compete in a competition called “Code Wars.”

Code Wars is a programming competition for computer science teams from all different schools and sizes ranging from 1A to 6A. The competition is sponsored by Hewlett Packard. During this competition, students are given a packet containing 24 programming prompts and attempt to do as many as they can in three hours. At the end of the three hour mark, the judges total up all of the points and declare the winners.

According to computer science coach Terry Morris, the event is held at the HP facility where they make all their servers.

“It is a huge complex,” Morris said. “There are usually about 250 to 300 teams, so around 1,000 students competing. There are two divisions, beginner and advanced. All of the schools regardless of size compete against each other. They also give away a lot of stuff. It is great for the kids because they get to see what it looks like to work at a large company.”

Members of the LCM team plan on taking a different approach to the problems they are given and will attempt to get the easiest ones done quickly in order to have time for the bigger problems. Although the team did not prepare for this contest specifically, the team has not stopped working since last year after they won State. They team even practiced during summer break.

“I am really looking forward to seeing the new problems and having fun with the new people going,” junior Derrick Martin said. “We would like to place in the top 100 teams which is about the top two percent.”

The winners of Code Wars earn a trophy and multiple door pries are given out. Last year, a team member won a $2,000 dollar laptop and others earned multiple items.

“It’s a great team building trip,” Morris said. “We are hoping to place in the top three against the 6A schools. For this event, we just want to have fun.”

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