Battles, Bots, and Breakthroughs

Through his dedication to coding, Aiden Acosta has grown significantly in his confidence as well as resilience through the coding programs offered at PHS. He began his coding journey sophomore year by taking Computer Science Essentials and since then has honed in his skills through different coding projects. Two of his favorite projects are Advanced Wars and a Morse code simulator. Advanced Wars is a war game inspired by the Nintendo Switch, and the Morse code project is a simulation that translates words into morse code. 

Outside of school, Acosta is currently working on a small scale war game where you can decide who you would like to attack, how you would do so, and where you would like to allocate resources. Acosta has struggled with Artificial Intelligence as he develops his code. Artificial Intelligence takes up a significant amount of power when creating programs which often results in high expenses, making it strenuous to expand the program. He keeps that in mind when forming his war game to keep the cost manageable.

According to Acosta, “Coding can be difficult,” and he has found that the best way to overcome challenges is to “try to work through it or refer to your friends.” He emphasizes that it is important to understand that you are going to fail a few times before succeeding. Working through those challenges is essential to the success of your project. According to Acosta “it has taught [him] to not be reliant on people.” However, he also admits, “Working with someone who is also good at coding can give you a better overall experience.” 

In the future Acosta would like to pursue a career in Chemical Engineering. Although he shares a passion in coding, Acosta acknowledges that careers in computer science rely on data analysis, which is not something he personally enjoys. He suggests that with AI becoming more popular in today’s society, minimal effort will be required to produce websites. This is disheartening for Acosta, as coding should be learned and if you have AI such as Vibe Coding that creates codes for you, you lose the learning aspect. Having taken advantage of the language of coding in high school, he has improved his memory and critical thinking which he feels will better prepare him for his future.