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Why You Should Participate in Google Code-in Next Year

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 skills

When participating in GCI, you will end up working with the other developers of the organization you contribute to. This helps teach you valuable communication skills.

Learning more about a particular program

If there's a particular project on GCI that seems interesting, Google Code-in is a great way to learn more about it and how it works! For example, when doing Google Code-in, I learned a lot about Apertium, a free and open-source machine translation system.

Have any more suggestions? Let us know in the comments!

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