Do you know your kids can compete with coders from all over the world by participating in certain coding contests for kids? Have you ever seen folks post about internships, goodies from coding contests, or competitions that they won?
Do you want to give them a try but aren’t sure where to begin?
If that’s the case, you’ve come to the correct place!
Consider all of your coding contest questions, and this article will address them all by the end.
But first, let’s look at an example of why we need to put our best foot forward. Is it possible to become the top cricket player only by practicing? No, you must prove yourself, defeat the opposition, and win the battle.
As a result, your kids must participate in competitions and enhance their skills.
Similarly, if your kid wants to be the best programmer, they must take on challenges and demonstrate their programming abilities. Coding competitions are the greatest method to do this.
These competitions allow young, gifted programmers to assess their skills and compare themselves to other coders around the world, inspiring them to practice more.
You can win prizes, employment, internships, scholarships, mentorships, and more by participating in these competitions.
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Coding Contests for Kids: What are they?
“Learning to code is useful no matter what your career ambitions are”
—Arianna Huffington
Coding contests are typically held in virtual environments, allowing participants from all around the world to compete. They instill in them the ability to think from a variety of angles.
In most coding events, kids will be given some problem statements to solve while taking into account time and space complexity. They should be able to optimize the code; doing so demonstrates that they are good programmers.
Hackathons are also included in coding competitions. In hackathons, you must create a project based on the issue statements or themes of an organization.
Kids must strengthen their presentation abilities, teamwork, and network by designing the entire proposal with a prototype and presenting it to the judges. Hackathons are the most effective approach to increase productivity.
In this article, we have listed some of the best coding contests for kids and mentioned the eligibility criteria for the contests.
Let’s discuss the best programming competitions in the world.
Top Coding Contests for Kids
We’ve compiled a list of some of the most renowned coding websites that host coding competitions where you can improve your skills in a variety of fields, ranging from popular data science to software development.
The majority of these are annual tournaments, but a couple is ongoing and open to everyone at any time.
These competitions are open to the public, so contestants can use any programming language they like, including C, C++, Java, Python, and others.
For example, most companies hire through these competitions. These platforms allow you to meet new people, share your expertise, and learn new skills.
THE ACM-ICPC INTERNATIONAL COLLEGIATE PROGRAMMING CONTEST
The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is the most prestigious and well-known programming competition for post-secondary students.
In 1977, during the ACM Annual Computer Science Conference, the inaugural competition was held. It has been held annually since then under the supervision of the Association for Computing Machinery.
In this competition, teams must solve as many tasks as possible in a limited amount of time. There are numerous rounds of regionals before the finals, and institutions representing a particular region are allowed to send as many teams as they desire.
However, each institution can only send one team to the World Finals. The finals are held in a different country each year.
Eligibility
The ACM/ICPC is a team-based competition with the following requirements for competitors:
- Only post-secondary students and first-year post-graduate students under the age of 24 are permitted, and each team is made up of three people. No one can compete in the finals more than twice, and no one can compete in the regionals more than five times.
TOPCODER
Topcoder is a crowdsourcing platform that connects designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive coders from across the world. They hold competitions twice a year, both virtual and on-location, and take on tasks from global brands like IMB, Google, and eBay.
Every week, they also hold individual matches in an online and automated version known as “Single Round Match.” In this age of cutthroat competition, it aids in enhancing and recreating our learning.
They lead you through SRMs, which make the experience both entertaining and interesting.
Eligibility
- All participants of the Topcoder Website who have consented to these Terms of Use and who are at least 18 years old at the time of enrollment.
- And have reached the age of majority in their jurisdiction of primary residence and citizenship are eligible to participate in the TCO and each Competition that is part of the TCO.
GOOGLE’S CODING COMPETITIONS
The goal of Google’s Coding Competitions is to entertain, challenge, and test coders all across the world. Every year, Google hosts three coding competitions, and anyone from anywhere in the globe can enter.
Google Code Jam is a yearly programming competition in which professional and student programmers compete to solve challenging algorithmic challenges in a set period.
This program will run from April to August and will consist of five rounds. To advance to the following round, you must score at least 30 points.
Eligibility
- To compete in a contest, you must be at least 16 years old at the time of registration.
- To compete in the last round of Code Jam or Hash Code, you must be at least 18 (18) years old or the legal age in your country of residence (whichever is higher) at the time of your initial registration.
- Additional limits could be put in a contest’s rules.
The Google Code to Learn Contest is one of the many coding contests for kids that can help kids ace and flaunt their coding skills with kids from all over the world. It is held every year, and kids of different age groups can participate in this contest.
THE ICFP PROGRAMMING CONTEST
Since 1998, the ICFP Programming Contest has been held every year around June or July, with the results announced at the International Conference on Functional Programming.
The ICFP is a three-day open programming competition that is both enjoyable and demanding. There is no entry fee or need to pre-register. Participants can take part from anywhere in the world.
They can establish teams, and there is no limit to how big they can be. Participants will have 72 hours to complete and submit their online entry. The lighting division is a 24-hour challenge that is frequently held.
One of the competition’s goals is to highlight the candidates’ favorite programming languages and tools.
Eligibility
- The ICFP programming contest has a wide range of eligibility requirements.
- Anyone who can program, whether an undergraduate student, a graduate student, a Ph.D. scholar, or even a teaching member, is eligible to compete.
FACEBOOK HACKER CUP
Facebook’s annual open programming competition, Hacker Cup, is available to participants from all over the world.
The goal of the program is to use problem-solving and algorithmic coding skills to progress through each year’s online rounds, receive prizes, and have a chance to compete in the worldwide finals for the grand prize.
This program will run from August to October and will consist of four rounds. To advance to the next round, you must qualify in each round.
Eligibility
- Anyone who qualifies for the qualification round is eligible to compete in the contest.
- Although, to receive interview calls from Facebook, you must be at least 18 years old.
Gennady Korotkevich: Best Programmer
Gennady Korotkevich is a world-class programmer. Since the age of 11, Gennady Korotkevich, a Belarusian competitive programmer, has won significant international contests.
He even took first place in several national events. Six straight gold medals in the International Olympiad in Informatics, as well as world championships in the 2013 and 2015 International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, are among his most notable achievements.
He entered each of the above-mentioned competitions. Not only that, but he also won the majority of them. He is genuine proof of how coding competitions may help a person become a better coder.
Benefits Of Participating In Coding Contest
Participating in a coding competition can increase your motivation to create new ideas and encourage you to think outside the box. Hackathons improve your collaborative skills and make it easier to transition into the corporate sector.
The real-world impact of coding competitions demonstrates to children and teenagers what computing can accomplish outside of the classroom and the value of open collaboration.
That is only one of the many advantages of Competitive Coding. There are plenty others, for example:
- Improves problem-solving abilities.
- Brain Exercise is guaranteed.
- Major Corporations find it more appealing.
- Swags from the most prestigious companies.
- It’s a way to get some fast coding practice.
- During job interviews, it gives you a significant technical advantage.
- Coding exercises can help to engage the learning centers of the brain.
- It can also help us strengthen our memory, problem-solving abilities, and cognitive abilities.
- Encourages programmers to produce cleaner, more efficient code.
- There is a vibrant community of competitive programmers.
- Encourages participants to work as a team.
- Increase your concentration.
- Excellent at debugging.
Conclusion
The advancement of technology has taken over everything nowadays and has done so for quite some time. Coding has become highly popular in this age.
It has improved their technological capabilities. Technology is built on the foundation of coding. You can’t create if you don’t know how to code, and both of these things begin with the letter ‘c.’ These coding competitions assist to improve these abilities even more.
Kids who are still unfamiliar with coding might use online platforms to learn the basics. Numerous online platforms work in this direction. Codevidhya contributes to this by offering quality coding education to children.
Once your child has mastered coding, he or she can enter these coding competitions to further develop their skills. So, if you want to sign up for online coding programs, go here.