KGS coding prodigy wins national competition for the second time

An S5 student from Kirkwall Grammar school has become a second time winner in a series of national competitions aimed at raising the profile of Computing Science in schools.

Mansie Gee was selected as a winner for the Summer of Code competition with his recent entry of an AI bot that communicates using voice recognition.

Inspired by Marvin from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the bot gets its responses by searching the web and uses a graphical interface Mansie designed to give a feeling of having an emotional response.

Judges were looking for "creative, eye-catching entries that stood out" and "code being used to make ideas come to life".

Mansie previously won a Christmas coding competition in the same series of competitions with his animated snowman with a self-composed music soundtrack and coded random animations for his winter-themed environment.

Denis Soames is Mansie’s teacher of computing science. He said: “Students were encouraged to code anything they liked using the skills we taught over the summer holidays and submit it to the competition before returning to school this term.

“Mansie yet again showed his outstanding grasp of programming and problem-solving skills, he merged in his personal interests like music and tech to produce something totally original that stood out nationally to represent both himself and KGS.  We can all look forward to seeing the next piece of software Mansie makes."

Mansie is pictured receiving the prize of a Raspberry Pi 400 kit provided by dressCode from computing science teacher Denis Soames.