World Record for Largest Programming Class Broken in Portugal
Thalles Lossurdo
How many students were in your high school or college classroom? No matter the number, it won’t beat the remarkable feat accomplished by the University of Lisbon last Saturday. The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) entered the Guinness World Records by gathering exactly 1,868 students in the same room for a massive programming class. This achievement far surpassed the previous record set on October 31, 2016, when 724 students participated in a programming class in Dallas, USA. Not only did IST accept the challenge, but they more than doubled the record, bringing together students ranging from 12 to 67 years old to attend the same class.
The chosen venue was a former warehouse dating back to 1904, which had previously been used as a truck yard and parking lot but now serves as a project hub for IST. The commitment required the involvement of three professors, and the class focused on teaching students how to solve Sudoku puzzles using programming logic and AI algorithms developed in Python.
The University of Lisbon had a broader goal with this event: to draw global attention to its IT hub and promote technological education in the country. Rogério Colaço, president of IST, stated: “To live in this world, to take advantage of it and be useful, it’s absolutely essential to have some technological knowledge to understand what’s around us.”
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