The results of the 2019 European Program Week proved to be the highest ever: in total, 4.2 million participants were involved in approximately 72,000 activities in more than 80 countries worldwide.
Although most of the activities promoted computational thinking and the fundamentals of programming in a fun and attractive way, statistical data show that an increasing number of activities have already focused on advanced technologies such as robotics or artificial intelligence, as in the Portuguese case. in which school children were introduced to the fundamentals of computational and robotics thinking through games.
Portugal (742) even cited for being part of the group of countries that more than doubled its activities compared to 2018, alongside Montenegro (241), Austria (1,417), North Macedonia (458), Finland (145 ), Romania (1,498), Poland (15,434), Kosovo (14), Malta (537), Turkey (20 839), Greece (891), Belgium (265), Bosnia and Herzegovina (99) and Cyprus (72).
The next edition of the Programming Week will take place between October 10 and 25, 2020 and the organizers can now begin to register their activities on the respective map of events where there is already Portuguese activity.
A novelty for this year is the inclusion of local hackathons, which will be organized by secondary school students in Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia and Spain. Each hackathon has about 60 participants organized in teams and each team has 36 hours to solve a particular problem.
There are then presentations to a jury made up of technology experts and the winning team will collect several awards, including a trip to Brussels. In parallel, workshops on programming, robotics and other subjects will be organized to teach basic knowledge to beginners.
