From left to right, Will Duggan, Mohsin Qureshi, Bailey Wong, Jasper Haag, and Ricky Cordero are pictured at MIT’s Blueprint event. Photo provided by Paul Marques.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology held their annual two-day event, Blueprint, for computer programming students over the weekend of Saturday, Feb. 27 through Sunday, Feb. 28. Many Malden High School students applied to participate, but only five students were chosen to attend including Ricky Cordero, Will Duggan, Jasper Haag, Mohsin Qureshi, and Bailey Wong.
The weekend consisted of two events: the learnathon and hackathon. The goal of Blueprint is to give students the opportunity to “learn from MIT students, make new friends, and build something cool” (Blueprint). After spending a day socializing and learning, participants had to compete in a programming competition.
The learnathon, which was held on Saturday, allowed students to attend “hands-on workshops” taught by MIT students (Blueprint). Topics discussed include the fundamentals of web, operating system development, and “other computer software related concepts” as senior Cordero described. The specialized tech topics introduced to the students are becoming crucial to learn for future programmers as technology rapidly advances.
The hackathon that wrapped up the weekend on Sunday was over ten hours long. Starting early at seven o’clock in the morning, students took the skills they had learned from the day prior, and applied them by forming teams and “hacking” away on their laptops with their project ideas. They worked late into the day, and of course, there were MIT students there to serve as mentors for the teams.
Cordero commented that he, along with seniors Qureshi, and Blue and Gold member Haag, worked together to develop “an interactive 3D graphical rubik’s cube solving program [that used] the unity game rendering engine” as their project.
At the end of the day, the teams presented their projects to the judges, and winners followed. Even though no awards were taken home by the students representing MHS, they learned valuable skills that will not only help them in their programming class, but their future careers.
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