Victor (Vale) Tolpegin, 16, won the grand prize in the international computer programming competition, Google Code-In. Tolpegin is a sophomore at Flint Hill School in Oakton. He spent several hundred hours programming for the open-source organization, Haiku, to be selected among the grand prize winners.
“The contest was a great deal of work, but I learned a lot and am honored to have been chosen as a Grand Prize Winner. I hope my work for Haiku made a small difference, and I can already see the exponential impact to my coding capability for school and other projects. While it was tough to work six to 10 hours a day on GCI during exams, over winter break and through my school commitments, it was worth it,” said Tolpegin.
Google Code-in (GCI) is a contest introducing pre-university students from around the world to open source development. GCI gives teens the opportunity to gain real world experience working with these organizations and to become a part of these communities.
There were 980 students from 65 countries who completed 4,776 tasks. Twenty-eight students were chosen for their exceptional work as grand prize winners earning them a trip to Google’s Mountain View, Calif. campus for four days in June. The grand prize winners will meet with Google engineers, have a tour of Google and learn more about some of the intriguing projects at Google.