Three Red Bank Regional High School seniors captured a second-place victory in the statewide coding competition held at Stockton University on March 16.
The seniors – Harry Jain, Damanbir Sahi and Stephen Zacks – were among those awarded for the second-place finish at the college that is located in Galloway Township.
More than 74 teams from 18 different high schools in New Jersey participated in Stockton University’s third annual Computer Science Teachers Association Southern New Jersey Computer Science Competition.
The Red Bank Regional coding team, which is broken up into six sections of three students each, were accompanied by Red Bank Regional Technology teachers Jeremy Milonas and Ali Sweeney at the logic-based competition.
“These boys have really impressed me with their hard work,” Milonas said.
According to Jain, students were divided into teams of three and alloted two hours to complete eight challenges, all varying in complexity. Code was required to be written in order to successfully accomplish the tasks.
“There were three computers set up, one for each member of the team. You were given a development environment and a prompt with each challenge. You, then, needed to decide how you wanted to go about coding the task. You needed to choose your variables, choose your methods and begin writing your code, either concurrently on the same problem or on different ones. This needed to be done as quickly as possible,” Jain said.
Jain mentioned at the end of the two hours, the seniors were able to complete seven of the eight challenges they faced, in record time.
In preparation for the statewide event, Milonas said the boys “worked hard throughout the year” in order to make the jump from last year’s fourth-place finish at the same competition.
Close-knit friends Jain, Sahi and Zacks are enrolled in the Engineering Academy at Red Bank Regional High School, located in Lincroft, where the academics cater to the boys’ shared interest in technology.
“Coding is a growing industry,” Zacks said. “It’s applicable to all things that we use. Coding is utilized in everyday technological operations. One of the hardest problems during the competition, in our opinion, was when you had to determine when a balance would equalize. In this case, you can make an iterative program.”
One of the “passion projects” the seniors noted they are working on requires the students to write code using a Raspberry Pi computer in order to build a self-driving, self-made RCR robot powered by Java code.
“All three of us were in the introduction to computer science class together freshman year, so we took what we learned from that class through our four years at RBR. As we’ve grown with computer science, we have grown as a team,” Jain said.
Zacks said the team also is in the initial design stages of app development for their student-run program, “Reaching Out.”
According to Jain, Reaching Out was derived from an innate drive to do good within the community.
“Over the summer, I volunteer for a program called Horizon, which serves underprivileged kids. It’s an educational and socially-enriching camp. I’ve really enjoyed volunteering here the past four years. I then mentioned how much I enjoyed the service to Harry,” Zacks said.
After brainstorming voluntary efforts, the seniors decided they would devote class time to code an app that would connect users with volunteer efforts in their area. Jain said community organizations will be able to make company accounts on the mobile application in order to appease the selection process.
“You would enjoy volunteering a lot more if you knew all of your opportunities around you. It’s a bit like Uber meets community service,” Jain laughed.
The seniors predict the app will see its completion towards the end of the academic year, when the passion project will be published to the Apple app store.
All three seniors said they plan to pursue degrees in either engineering or technology-based fields after high school.
