Abstraction, Calvin University’s official computer science club, is hosting a coding competition for students to practice their skills outside of class while building social connections. 

The event, featuring free food, drinks and an engraved plaque for the winner, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 4, starting at 1:30 p.m. It will take place in SB 372 — the room also known as the Maroon lab — in the Science Building.

The speed- and accuracy-based challenges are assigned by computer science professor and club advisor Victor Norman.

“It’s a chance for [students] to refine their skills and have recollection of some of the data structures they’ve learned” outside of class, according to Oghenesuvwe Ogedegbe, a senior studying computer science and Abstraction’s secretary.

“They’re able to also get corrections from their peers easily, instead of having to wait a long time for a professor to give them feedback,” Ogedegbe said.

In addition to being an opportunity for students to sharpen their coding skills, the event is an opportunity for computer science students to connect socially. While other STEM departments at Calvin – like engineering – have multiple social events throughout the year, “computer science students don’t have a lot of stuff they can do together, apart from Abstraction events and Google Developers Club events. It just gives them more and more chances to meet with their peers,” said Ogedegbe.

The Google Developers Student Club (GDSC) is another student organization involving primarily computer science students. A third club — CalvinHacks — was absorbed into Abstraction. 

The event is also part of Abstraction’s effort to reach out to underclassmen. Currently, all of Abstraction’s leadership are seniors expected to graduate in May, and recruitment for Abstraction leadership is ongoing. 

“We’re hoping to have a good turnout and hopefully to get lots of juniors and freshmen and sophomores to participate. It’s usually upper-class people who tend to come to these sorts of things,” said Haim Hong, Abstraction’s president.

The coding competition is one of many scheduled Abstraction-hosted coding events. The event foreshadows the CalvinHacks Hackathon –– an even larger, 24-hour coding event scheduled for March 2024. Unlike the Nov. 4 coding competition, the Hackathon will allow projects in a variety of mediums, including websites, mobile applications, desktop programs and hardware-based projects. Last spring, around 80 individuals attended the event – some from outside Calvin — but only about 40 made it through the event.