PyLearners wins Rep. Juan Vargas’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 52nd District
Rep. Vargas has named Yechan Park of Otay Ranch High School, Chetan Thotti of Scripps Ranch High School, and Ming Lu of Scripps Ranch High School as the winners of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 52nd District.
When asked what inspired the creation of PyLearners, the students said, “My experience as a beginner programmer inspired me to create this website. Something I struggled with as a beginner was that once I had finished learning the basics of Python, I felt like my progress had stagnated as I did not get much practice. I also didn’t really know where to go or how to improve after finishing my course on Python. I knew that there were hundreds of different libraries in Python, but I didn’t know where to start in utilizing some of these useful libraries. This was my inspiration for the wordle-like game, which I had helped to develop. By providing the user with brief descriptions of the most useful python libraries, we hope to inspire the user to look up these specific libraries in more detail to understand their functionalities. The Pythonle game was designed to give users a chance to practice both their python and overall programming skills so that users can steadily improve as they gain more insight with the programming puzzles. I also really like video games, so that inspired me to game-ify python learning, giving users greater motivation so they can have fun while learning.
On the more technical side, the biggest inspiration for our website was Wordle, which is a game where users try to guess a 5-letter word. Both of our games are heavily based on Wordle, specifically the aspects of guessing something in a limited number of attempts and receiving more information about the target with each guess. This was because I have seen many other wordle spinoffs online, and I wanted to create one of my own. Another inspiration for the app was Leetcode, specifically for Pythonle, from which I used the idea of users submitting code to solve a problem, which is tested against many test cases.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival.