KUCHING – Bachelor of Computer Science student Nguyen Thanh Son took first place in the “Talent Hunt” programming competition organised by Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus, recently.
Engineering undergraduate students Heng Kiat Jiang and Danny Yip Wei Seng emerged second and third place winners, respectively.
They were among a total of 30 students from the computing and engineering disciplines who took part in the competition which first started with the qualifying round in September.
To qualify for the final stage, they had to tackle short questions to solve the given programming problems. Of the total, 15 students made it through to the second and final round where they were given a more complex case study to solve, and had to develop their own algorithm by using any programming platform.
“It was good to see so many students give it a go in the programming competition and we are happy to note that there are many students with hidden talents in our midst,” said Dr Valliappan Raman, the bachelor of ICT coordinator, who presented the winners with trophies, medals and certificates at a simple ceremony on campus.
“In future, we hope to arrange more of such activities to boost our students’ learning and programming skills.”
Organized by a team of computing lecturers from Swinburne Sarawak’s Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Science, the aim of the competition was to identify talents among the students and prepare them for competitions outside the university, said computing lecturer Mujahid Tabassum.
“It also helped us to spot students who have the knack for programming, which is an essential aspect of computer science education. Nowadays, the computing industry is on the lookout for good programmers and developers with mature and strong skills to develop their applications and systems,” said the academic.
“At the same time, we also wanted to promote the importance of programming among students from other disciplines.”
The 15 students who qualified for the final round were presented with a medal and an appreciation certificate by Valliappan.