On April 6, 2019, the American University of Armenia (AUA) hosted DigiCode 2019, the 5th annual youth programming contest, organized by the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE). The event was co-organized by AUA CSE and sponsored by Ucom Telecommunications Company.

The contest aims at encouraging and developing Armenian schoolchildren’s algorithmic thinking turning them from game consumers to game makers, and identifying gifted teenagers to enable them to further develop their creative abilities.

This year more than 300 schoolchildren-participants from all regions of Armenia and Javakhk applied to participate in the contest. Of those, 55 schoolchildren representing all the regions of Armenia were selected to compete in the final round. For the first time this year, DigiCode contestants used the more advanced programming language Python, aside from Scratch and K-Turtle and generated more optimistic solutions.

The participants presented their works to the panel of judges and competed in the following categories: Best Design, Best Algorithmic Solution, Best Interactive Animation and Device Integration, and Best Game.

The winners were awarded with monetary prizes from Ucom. To further motivate the participants, AUA’s CSE presented monetary prizes to the teachers of the winning teams and their Armath Engineering Laboratories – 40,000 AMD to each teacher and additional 20,000 AMD to each respective lab.