Microsoft Visual Studio Code Hackathon

Event Description

There are 72M students learning to code around the world. How might we make learning more accessible, equitable, and, more seamless for them?

MLH and Microsoft have joined forces. Join the hackathon to pay it forward to those learning CS for the first time.

The context: Professors and teaching assistants build custom tools like python tutor, Harvard’s Help50 and Check50, or use visualizers because educational IDE’s don’t exist at scale.

The challenge: On the VS Code team, we want to make learning to code easier. For students new in their coding journey, there’s a lot to do: learning new programming syntax, understanding computer science concepts, setting up a coding environment, and figuring out how to use an editor / IDE. We challenge you to build an extension to help new coders learn. For students, by students. What extension can you build in VS Code to make any step or part of this simpler? How you promote collaboration or community? How can you increase access and accessibility? You could choose to invent something new or take an existing tool (Like Harvard’s Help50) and modify it for VS Code.

Think back to when you were learning to code. Think about students who have a range of abilities and contexts.

• What are shortcomings in coding tools?
• How do we embrace the full range of human diversity to create equitable learn-to-code experiences for the widest number of people?

Join us and win a mentorship session with a Vice President at Microsoft, Amanda Silver.