Young coders display skills at Code Fest

Dundigal: EPAM Systems, India, a leading global provider of digital platform for engineering and software development services, conducted Code Fest for 140 engineering students at the MLR Institute of Technology (MLRIT) Campus, here on Sunday. The EPAM Code Fest saw pre-final engineering students from different cities in India come together to participate in a Coding Dojo challenge.

Engineering DNA is at the core of EPAM's culture, and EPAM India organizes myriad of engineering programs for its associates within the organization. This year, EPAM India decided to take this culture of learning to colleges and universities across India, where young engineers could get a hands-on feel of this experience.

"The Coding Dojo Challenge is meant to put the fun back into learning and get young engineers to perfect their coding skills before they go on to take up jobs in the industry", says Emmanuel Gosula, Senior Resource Development Manager at EPAM India.

Essentially, a Coding Dojo is a meeting where a bunch of coders get together to work on a programming challenge. They are there to have fun and to engage in "Deliberate Practice" in order to improve their skills.

Set up into pairs, the students' goal is to create an artificial intelligence and to make it play a simple game on behalf of them. Each player pair's algorithm (AI BOT) is uploaded to the dojo server and competes with other participants. Whoever creates the best bot wins the game and wins the challenge.

"We are thrilled to host EPAM India at our university campus. It has been heartening to see the students' skills at tackling the coding challenge and compete for the top spot. From the scores on the board, it sure looks like a close race to the top," said Marri Rajasekhar Reddy, secretary at MLRIT College.

Deva Shivakanth & Kusa Vamsi from BVRIT College; Mithra Buggaveeti, Chenampilly Govind Kumar, B Srihitha Media & CVSS Sreerama from KMIT college; S Karpooravally, Mankal Rohith Kumar, Dileep Kumar Reddy & Rishika Reddy from Vardhaman College; Sai Navyasree & K Chetan from MLRIT college have emerged as the winners of EPAM Code Fest 2019 contest.