By Olivia Chiu
Copy Editor
Student programmers of all skill levels gathered to build apps and games, attend workshops, and meet with mentors at the first CodeDay Los Angeles of 2016. The SPHS Coding Club went to Santa Monica for the 24-hour event from February 13 to 14.
CodeDay is a triannual event that is hosted simultaneously across 38 different cities nationwide. The SPHS Coding Club sent the largest group of students to CodeDay LA with 40 members in attendance.
“People have busy lives so CodeDay provides me and other students a chance to learn something new or work on a project without worrying about anything else,” senior Dutch Clark said. “This CodeDay was huge and I loved seeing creative ideas all those minds came up with.”
Clark won the Most Fun Award with his creation, “Loading Simulator,” which is similar to the popular game Cookie Clicker and generates money by filling a slowly loading bar. Sophomore Leon Montealegre received Most Technically Challenging Award for the second time this school year, and also won Top Overall Award this year for his game “Multidimensional Llama.” The project was created in Java and, true to its name, displays a house and llama in both 2D and 3D. Montealegre used sine and cosine functions to return values faster than Java’s built-in functions and produce a smoothly-operating game. Junior Elizabeth Kaplan’s “Koi Pond” earned her the Judges’ Choice Award. “Koi Pond,” also made in Java, is a text-based RPG that Kaplan demonstrated by quickly killing the protagonist in a speedrun of
the game.
“I am excited that the veteran members are moving on to more complex programming languages and development programs,” co-president senior Raymond Gilmartin said. “I am so proud of our school and our club and it is great to see the projects getting more sophisticated and stronger and to see lots of
new faces.”
Participants encourage their peers to attend the next CodeDay L.A. and stress that skill with programming is not required. Coding Club co-president senior Kristen Kafkaloff, who created an Android app called “How to Restaurant!” designed to choose restaurants, invite friends, select meals, and split checks and tips, specifically encourages female coders to try CodeDay.
“There were definitely a good number of girls this time,” Kafkaloff said. “I hope that we can continue to encourage even more girls to come because it’s an amazing experience.”