By The Numbers: October 2018 21-Day Coding Challenge Wrap-Up By: Tim Huebsch November 1, 2018 Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. We launched our 21-Day Coding Challenge on Oct. 1, 2018, for a nationwide (and global) movement dedicating 21 consecutive days to coding. Why? To help build a daily habit of coding using JavaScript to provide a foundation for continued learning, and to test those already familiar with the language to push their comfort zones and grow as a developer. The premise of the 21DCC is that participants act as a lighthouse operator to keep passing ships and passengers safe through various coding challenges. We had close to 5,000 participants from across Canada, and around the world, register for the 21-Day Coding Challenge, making it our most successful edition to date. We hosted a team aspect for the first time, with a public leaderboard, and gave away a bunch of prizes (check your inboxes)! The contest portion of the 21-Day Coding Challenge is complete and the winners have been drawn but even if you didn't win, we certainly hope you learned some valuable coding skills from this experience. Or, if you haven’t quite managed to complete every challenge yet, there’s still time to work on that! And now, without further ado, here’s what you came here for: numbers, followed by the prizes! As a community… 26,250 People reached on Twitter (as well as 100,000 impressions) using the 21-Day Coding Challenge hashtag #21DCC. 4,882 Participants registered to complete daily coding challenges in JavaScript by Oct. 28. 602 Participants completed the 21-Day Coding Challenge by Oct. 28. 532 Teams took on the challenge, working and learning together. 261 Forum participants, with 176 topics and 723 daily active users 194 Participants completed the 21-Day Coding Challenge in 21 days. 2 Awesome Youtube videos (here and here) by Ramon Lopez of Success In Tech walking participants through day five and day 15 of the 21-Day Coding Challenge. 🎉 1 Canine participant (kidding) Prizes Now, for the good stuff! Who’s going home with sweet swag? Grand prize Nathan Forbes from Victoria, B.C. won the 21-Day Coding Challenge grand prize and will be heading to beautiful northern California with flights to San Francisco, complete with three-nights accommodation and a tour of Silicon Valley. Congratulations, Nathan! He's especially looking forward to touring Google HQ and the B8ta Store, a retail-as-a-service company. "I've always had a passion for computer science, and I joined this challenge to help me get back in touch with coding and try to create a habit of it again," Nathan, a 20-year-old automotive apprentice, says. "The challenge was great! As someone who hadn't worked in JavaScript before (but I have worked in other programming and scripting languages ie Python, C, Java, PHP), it helped me explore the language in a fun and engaging way." Finalist prizes Additional congratulations goes out to the following participants for winning our random draw for one (1) of our three (3) finalist prizes (for those who completed all 21 days of challenges between Oct. 1-28): MacBook Air - Danvy Tran from Calgary Oculus Rift & Touch System - Bart Nagel from Vancouver Samsung Level On headphones - Linh Ho from Vancouver Team prize freeCodeCamp, a non-profit organization which aims to make learning web development accessible to anyone, took home the team prize and finished atop the prizing leaderboard. Stay tuned for a blog post on how they were able to rally such a big squad to make coding a daily habit! 21-Day Coding Challenge heroes Beyond just the grand prize and finalist prizes winners, there are other notables who deserve shoutouts from the 21-Day Coding Challenge. Forum board champion: @brandinchiu Brandin Chiu is our part-time instructor in Ottawa and routinely answered participant’s questions with thoughtful and valuable insight on our forum. For that reason, he’s our forum board champion. "It was a ton of fun working through the Lighthouse Labs 21-Day coding challenge," Chiu says. "It was great getting friends and colleagues who had had inclinations towards learning how to code involved and helping them form habits to help with their future learning. However, my favourite part had to have been my interactions with people on the forums. It was wonderful seeing all different kinds of people from different backgrounds and walks of life all taking this challenge together, and really embrace the collaborative nature of programming." Coding Challenge unsung hero: Matsuko Matsuko participated in our May pilot of the 21-Day Coding Challenge and again the October edition of the #21DCC, doing all 21 challenges in 21 days without missing a single day. And, she has a Github dedicated to the 21-Day Coding Challenge. “I did the #21DCC to practice JavaScript and for a chance to win prizes [as a bonus],” Matsuko says. Featured Lighthouse Labs alumni: Kang Wang Kang Wang (Kdubbss) from Lighthouse Labs' October 2017 Web Development Bootcamp cohort in Vancouver completed all 21 days of challenges in exactly 21 days. He shared a ton of cool code to his Github as well! "What I really liked about the 21DCC was how it unified a large group of like minded individuals to form a community of actively engaged coders," Wang says. 21DCC GIF genius: Venkat We love when our followers interact with us on social media. Venkat (@vgkrish) shared a GIF with us. Every. Single. Day. Now that’s dedication and it definitely made the experience that much better for us. “[The 21DCC] is a fun way to start daily coding with a helpful community and if [you’re] lucky, you get prizes too!” Venkat says. Devhub #21DCC rivalry Devhub, the education and community space out of which Lighthouse Labs operates, had squads in Toronto and Vancouver, going head-to-head in this inter-office rivalry, not to mention their awesome live-action shots on social media. DevhubTO came out on top despite having just two members, scoring 40 points (both members completed 20 challenges). DevhubVan, with three members, scored 21 points. Honourable mentions on Twitter go to @stevehadden, @8bitsky and @L0v3Carlos for tweeting us almost every day and using the hashtag #21DCC each time, helping spread the word of our fun initiative. How our offices (full-)stacked up YVArrr (16 members): 187 points Toronto Git R Done (16 members): 155 points DevhubTO (two members): 40 points DevhubVan (three members): 21 points Team Shoutouts! Final (eligible-for-prizing) team leaderboard freeCodeCamp - 524 points We Haven't A Clue - 306 points byte me; - 305 points Women in Web Dev FB Group - 280 points TeddyBears - 265 points ReferenceError: "x" is not defined - 233 points CSTBCITDT - 224 points Guardians of the Galaxy - 211 points Mala-Coders - 191 points YVArrr - 187 points YP Code Bandits - 187 points Four Feet - 187 points A special shoutout goes to the Women in Web Development Facebook group which accumulated 638 points! (They're not atop the prizing leaderboard as many of their members are located outside of Canada.) Thank you to our community partners and sponsors for making this happen! Sponsor: EA Games Community partner: Kids Code Jeunesse Community partner: Startup Calgary Community partner: Thinkific Did you know we offer FREE learn to code resources in JavaScript, HTML & CSS and iOS? Check out all our courses here. Or if you’re ready to take the next step in your coding journey, check out our part-time courses including Intro to Front-End with JavaScript, Intro to Web Development and Web Development.