Coding is a hobby of many adults and a job for some but what about the teens or young adults that have taken a liking towards this pastime. Here at Mount Vernon High School,there aren’t many students deeply involved in coding but most of whom are part of the school’s robotics team. It took a lot for these students to become the coding masterminds that they are today. And it is through this skill that they have accomplished many astonishing goals

Matthew Bradbury – Self taught

For Matthew Bradbury, (10th grade) coding has become a useful tool, he uses it to not only aid in the success of the robotic team but also to make a bit of cash.

Matthew was first intrigued by the idea of coding when he was six, watching some videos of MIT students. Seeing them make programs and building machines inspired his love for technology and coding. He started off his coding journey like many other kids in the school system, with simple coding blocks. After this he decided to dive deeper and explore more complex coding software’s and languages. As he was fairly young when coding sparked an interest in his mind he was not able to receive the information he needed through classes. Because of this he had to find a work around and ended up teaching himself. He did this through many hours of researching on platforms such as Reddit. Reddit is a platform in which people create groups for any reason or need and they can pose questions to the group for help. It can also be used to share anything the users create or find interesting. After researching he would try to use his new found knowledge to create something he found interesting. When his beginner attempts inevitably failed he would go back to research and the process would repeat. Now that Matthew has learned how to get by with his knowledge he has started to focus on implementing his skills to create websites in hopes to score a few extra dollars.
His advice for beginner coders is to only start if you are truly interested as it is a skill that takes a long time to master. Many times taking over 100-1000 hours to understand the language fluently.

Nate Poduska – Mentor taught

Nate Poduska (10th grade) is also a part of the Mount Vernon robotics team and much like Matthew coding has helped him to more efficiently create a functioning robot.

Nate first learned coding from his father who is a software engineer. Being around someone who knows a lot about the world of coding has greatly impacted Nate’s learning in one of the best ways possible. With a coding mentor readily available his learning quickly took off. He began with a lightweight coding language called Lua. The Lua program is a simplified version of another program called C. In his early years of coding he mostly received resources and lessons from his dad but as he got older and his projects became more complex he had to find a new source to use.
“Websites helped a lot” Nate said as “I am able to look up the documents I need and build from there.”
Nate’s first project was an application he made using C++ (another coding language) that he made in Visual Studio (a program created by Microsoft to create websites along with apps). As this was one of his first projects he was aided by his dad and could refer to him with any questions. Throughout Nate’s history of coding he has created many apps, interfaces and websites but he is especially proud of one. Using Lua he was able to create a high quality user interface that he was able to use to score a few extra dollars. For him one of the greatest challenges of programming is the debugging stage because “ errors almost always happen” in this stage it is up to the programmer to find the errors and sort them out in order for their code to work. “The debugging process can sometimes be a large enough barrier that it seems almost impossible to gain enough motivation to overcome.”
His advice for anyone wanting to learn how to code is to learn the structure of code instead of individual pieces. “It’s just like learning a world language- the more you learn about one or a few programming languages, the easier it will be to learn other programming languages.”
As Nate’s coding journey continues he plans on formally studying computer science but as of right now he will continue to teach himself and learn what he needs to become a better programmer.

Matthew Bany – Beginner

Matthew Bany (10th Grade) is also part of the robotics team with Matthew Bradbury and  Poduska. Bany has recently started coding in order to help out the robotics team when Bradbury and Poduska are busy with other programs that need more complex code.
“Coding has helped the robotics team because it is required to code, otherwise the robot will not do anything; however, that is really basic coding. The more complex codes are what makes teams good in robotics.” Bany says.

Bany has taken some classes on coding along with receiving plenty of practice at robotics. Bany has learned how to code in three different languages: Python, Java Script, and C++. Along with being a novice coder Bany has provided insight on how exactly coding has helped the robotics team. More complex code provides advantages to the team by helping the robot to perform otherwise difficult tasks. For example this year the team used an odometry system that allows the robot to track its position on the field. Overall Bany’s experience with coding is limited but as he continues to learn he will be able to implement his ideas more effectively and become a well versed coder much like his teammates.