By The Numbers: May 2019 21-Day Coding Challenge Wrap-up By: Tim Huebsch May 26, 2019 Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. More than 5,500 people just completed a mission through space with our latest edition of the 21-Day Coding Challenge. Between May 1-21, coding enthusiasts used JavaScript to solve a new challenge every day to help build a habit. In this third run of the 21-Day Coding Challenge, participants included everyone from seasoned developers to people who have never touched code before. For three weeks, coders spent a few minutes each day furthering their education and continuous learning skills. Time flew by at the speed of light and we can’t wait for the next one. Don’t worry if you missed out on the latest set of challenges: the challenges and the forum will remain open for anyone who wishes to level up on their coding skills. The learn-to-code initiative not only attracted coders from Canada, but from 84 other countries worldwide. As a community… 123,000 People reached on Twitter between May 1-21 for the 21-Day Coding Challenge. 5,500 Participants registered to complete daily coding challenges in JavaScript. 2,100 The number of posts on the community forum where participants discussed challenges and helped each other debug their code. 1,613 The number of times Lighthouse Labs was mentioned on Twitter during the challenge’s three-week period. Thanks to everyone who shared their coding journey and used the hashtag #21DCC to chime in. 1,285 Participants completed the 21-Day Coding Challenge in 21 days, and thus were entered into our finalist prizes draws. 507 Forum participants, with 208 topics created on the community forum. 483 Teams took on the challenge, working and learning together. 85 The number of countries represented in the 21-Day Coding Challenge. 42 The number of daily prizes we gave away during the challenge including gift cards, Bluetooth Tiles, Fitbit Flex 2s, EA sports games, Swell water bottles and much more. You can see the entire list of daily prize winners over on the forum. 4 The number of people who started and completed all 21 challenges on the final day of the challenge. One of them was Duruhan, a recent graduate of our Montreal Web Development Bootcamp. “Storifying coding challenges is an excellent idea,” he says. “A well-written story makes it captivating and I think it really provides a chance to those who want to try out programming in a not-so-serious fashion.” Another 21DCC marathoner, James, added that the “21-Day Coding Challenge was well designed, and offered an excellent introduction to the basics of JavaScript, for both new programmers as well as those coming from other languages. Personally, due to my background in Java, HTML, Python, etc., completing the challenge took me approximately two hours.” “I found that it was a fun way to practice coding skills and they were a good way to test my skills,” said Emelie, a third participant who did all 21 challenges on the final day. 1 Awesome blog post from Benedict Neo who details their experience doing the 21-Day Coding Challenge, what they learned from it, and their solutions for all challenges if you want to compare code. “The decision to embark on this journey was certainly worth it,” they write. “I initially thought this challenge would be super hard and I wouldn't be able to finish it. But it turned out to be the opposite. I was very excited to do the next challenge every day and it sort of became a routine.” “It was an experience, an endeavour, a training that taught me about failing and how important it is to have good code. It was the errors and bugs that gave me an imperative insight of how coding is like, a lot of debugging and making sure your code works.” Prizes Grand Prize This time, we’re sending our grand prize winner to the east coast. Our top prize for the 21-Day Coding Challenge is a trip to one of North America’s booming tech hotspots. The winner and a guest will enjoy a trip to Boston with three nights accommodation as well as citypasses and a tour of MIT and Harvard. The winner was chosen at random and everyone who registered was eligible for the draw. Finalist Prizes In addition to our grand prize and daily prizes, we had four items up for grabs for our finalist draw, open to those who completed all 21 challenges. Finalist prizes include a MacBook Air, Nintendo Switch, Apple AirPods, and a Google Home Mini. Team Prize The prizing-winning team is team #2886BB, which scored 1002 points, an impressive feat considering the absolute max point score is 1050. I thought the challenge was super fun. I am kind of bummed that it is over now,” said team captain and senior UX designer Jenny Lee. “My team and I always looked forward to the challenges everyday. Some of us even did it right when it was released at midnight. My favourite part of the challenge was learning new ways to solve a problem and working with my awesome team.” Learn more abut team #2886BB in our latest blog post. 21-Day Coding Challenge Heroes The coding challenge is about more than just prizes. The following people earned shoutouts for going above and beyond in enhancing the overall experience of the 21DCC. Forum Board Champions Our community forum was once again a popular hit among participants as a place for discussion. Among the hundreds of participants, a few stood out in particular. Vasily (cpt.waffle), a full-time mentor at our Toronto office, Sebastien (Seb), a future Lighthouse Labs Web Development Bootcamp student in Montreal, Pierre (Symetrie), Audrey (odgerey) and Justin (jbberinger) all put in hours of work answering questions from participants. 21DCC GIF Genius: Venkat For the second consecutive 21-Day Coding Challenge - in case you missed it, this is actually our third go of the 21DCC - Venkat is a GIF genius on social media. Like they did in October, Venkat (@vgkrish) shared a GIF with us every single day of the challenge and has clearly mastered their craft. 21DCC Social Media Stars We loved seeing everyone share their coding journey on social media, whether it was on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. Some created their own hashtag, while others tweeted awesome space-related snippets that were out of this world. 21-Day Coding Challenge Unsung Hero: Jenny Chan Lighthouse Labs alumnae Jenny Chan once again organized the overall-leaderboard-winning team, Women in Web Development. In fact, a second Women in Web Development team finished third overall on the leaderboard too. “Our team loved having the opportunity to learn JavaScript together,” Jenny told us. “We had our own Slack team, and members helped each other out everyday. At one point, they even wanted to start Codewars and learning even more. It's all because the challenge gave them the coding bug! It's incredible how 104 women completed the challenge. Many of them did not know JavaScript before starting.” Lighthouse Labs Cross-country Rivalry Lighthouse Labs has six locations across the country and our east and west offices went head-to-head for bragging rights and a pizza party. Team east, ES6IX, prevailed with 299 points, good for 11th overall on the prizing leaderboard. Team west, console.log("allWeDoIsWin"), scored 137 points. ES6IX had 26 members while console.log("allWeDoIsWin") had 17 members. Finally, thank you to our community partners and sponsors for helping make the 21-Day Coding Challenge possible. Sponsor: EA Games Community partner: Kids Code Jeunesse Did you know we offer free learn to code resources in JavaScript, Python, HTML and CSS, and iOS Essentials? Check out all our free courses here. Or if you’re ready to take the next step in your coding journey, check out our part-time programs including Intro to Front-End with JavaScript and Intro to Web Development. For those who aspire to be a web developer, make sure to check out our full-time Web Development Bootcamp.