GCodeIn

Note Google has cancelled GCI. 😢 This post is now for historical purposes only. 🏛️ Let's start out with defining what Google Code-in, commonly known as GCI, is. Google Code-in is an open-source development contest for 13-17 year old pre-university (a.k.a. high school or secondary school) students. The goal is to encourage students to get involved in open-source software development. If you're not a programmer, don't worry! There are plenty of non-coding tasks, including writing documentation, designing logos, and many other things! Learning more about code (or other things) In Google Code-in, you often don't know exactly how to complete a task. You often have to get help. This is a good thing, because it encourages you to learn more about whatever you're doing. Even if you never finish a particular task, you can still learn from it. For example, in a logo design task that I never finished, I learned that good logos don't rely on text. Communication ski...

If you received a Finalist, Runner-up, or Grand Prize Winner email yesterday, please make sure it is legitimate. There have been spam/prank emails telling random students that they are Finalists, Runners-up, or Grand Prize Winners. At least one came from gci-support@sapo.pt. How to tell a legitimate email from an illegitimate one: Make sure it comes from codein-noreply@google.com, not any other address. Make sure it has Google's address and a "mandatory service announcement" paragraph at the bottom. Make sure there is a PDF certificate with your correct name attached. Make sure there is no Google Docs document listed as an attachment. At least one of the spam messages had a Google Doc listing acceptable forms of school ID attached. Also, the document attached had last year's dates. The legitimate emails contain a link to a Google Docs document, but it is not an attachment . The document in the legitimate emails contains this year's dates...