By Maddie Naeve

Each display on a phone or laptop is put together by a system coded by ones and zeros. Mount Vernon students Matthew Hall, Mitchell Hall, Jeremy Ferguson, and David Wolfe work to understand and solve problems within that system.

They take part in the computer programming team which takes part in competitions to see who can solve computer programming errors the fastest. The team is affiliated with the school but practices without an adviser. The team receives supplies via business teacher Kevin Murray.

The team goes by the name Modulo, which is a useful technique in computer programming. They began their loosely structured practices at the beginning of quarter three using hackerrank.com. “Hackerrank is a website with a series of programming questions with increasing difficulty,” said Ferguson.

They are preparing for the Hawkeye Challenge Programming Competition at the University of Iowa’s Maclean Hall on April 28 at 8:30-3:00. Each team is given five problems, and they must share one computer to solve them. The team with the shortest total time to solve all the problems wins.

There are about 24 teams that attend total, and the competition is split up into two groups. The D1 teams consist of teams whose members who have completed AP computer science or are currently taking the class. The D2 teams consist of those who have not. During the 2017 competition the team was in the D2 class and they got first.

This year, Modulo is taking on the D1 teams. They are competing against a variety of teams, from one of the 10 Iowa City West Teams to a single homeschooled student from Wisconsin.