The De Soto High School programming team placed third at the Kansas State University Coding Contest on Nov. 10.

The programming team was made up of three sophomores from the DHS robotics club: Zach Deibert, Alex Webber and Cody Moose.

“We were given a variety of problems and we had [a certain amount of time] to solve each problem and they all had different difficulties. Some were rather easy and some were much harder. We got points for finishing each one right and then we got points for how long it took us,” Webber said.

The boys were excited to place to high at the competition, as DHS has no coding or computer programming classes like the other schools in the competition.

Computer programming is the coding in computer software that causes it to run the way it does. The apps on a phone, iOS updates and even Facebook are created from computer programming.

“I’m really interested in math and science and that’s just another extension upon that,” Moose said.

Moose has been into robotics and coding since he was in third grade.

“Throughout elementary school … I went to a robotics camp in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, hosted by Lee’s Summit High School and their robotics team. That got me really interested in robotics and the programming part,” Moose said. “Because I was involved in Robotics from that, I ended up on the Mill Valley High School robotics team as a freshman last year on the programming team.”

All the boys were new to the type of programming involved at the KSU Coding Contest.

“Alex and I are very new to programming in Java. We started in Java last fall and after only a year, Alex, Zach and I were able to get third. It was really cool,” Moose said.

The programming team was proud to have placed so high in the contest and plan to continue working and learning to code computers. They also hope to see computer programming classes introduced at DHS someday.

“[The results] felt great. It’s third place and you get a medal. It was really cool because we don’t really have any computer science classes … and all the other schools that were in our division [do],” Webber said.