Agustin Zubiaga, 15, was one of the 20 winners of the Google Code-in Competition. The contest attracted 344 teenagers from 36 countries, between the ages of 13 and 17.
Agustin lives in Rafael Perazza, a town in San Jose province, and began programming on Plan Ceibal (XO) computers at a workshop at Uruguay’s Polytechnic University (UTU) when he was only 12. He said that the IT instructor at UTU gathered a group to teach them programming. This led to him joining a developers group under Sugar Labs, a nonprofit organization in charge of developing the graphic environment for XO netbooks named Sugar.
As a member of this group, Agustin got the opportunity to participate in this contest for 3 months, during which they faced various challenges at different difficulty levels.
By winning the competition, he will have the opportunity to visit Google’s facilities in California, and meet the engineers working there.
Meanwhile Miguel Brechner, President of The Plan Ceibal Program, said there are thousands of kids programming in Uruguay and Plan Ceibal is looking for ways to organize this number and capitalize on its wealth.
