There is much discussion around learning from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The option of learning online is being harnessed by many. This highlights the importance of computer programming and coding in today's world.

Pranav Mruthyunjayan, a Grade 9 student at Churchill Secondary, recently won a coding competition by Google. He tells us more:

Google Code-in is a competition hosted by Google. The competition educates and encourages teenagers aged 13 to 17 to learn more about open source and computer programming. It allows them to work on open source projects. What is open source? Open source is when projects have their computer programming code and assets available for free on a code sharing platform. Anyone may copy the code and work with it. There are a variety of reasons why this is great. Here are three: 1) Lots of developers use it as a starting point for their own projects 2) They identify issues or 3) contribute new code.

The Google Code-In competition lets participants work on projects from open source organizations such as mobile applications or websites. Research and documentation tasks are available. At the end of the competition, the organization for which the participant completed the most tasks may select them as a grand prize winner. I was selected as a grand prize winner by FOSSASIA. This nonprofit develops open source software and open hardware to improve people's lives.

Unfortunately because of current circumstances, my trip to Google HQ in Mountain View, California, The United States of America (that was part of my prize) has been cancelled, but I have received a monetary prize instead. We will also communicating with Google engineers and executives via online conferencing soon.

"Pranav is one of two Canadian students to be awarded a grand prize in the Google Code-in 2020 competition. Over 3,500 teenagers from seventy-six countries entered," my teacher Trevor Gibbens says. "Pranav usually volunteers at lunch each Thursday as a coding coach in our Python programming club. He helps and encourages beginner programmers," adds Gibbens.

Huge congratulations to Mruthyunjayan on this amazing achievement!

Learn more about the Google Code-In competition at https://codein.withgoogle.com/