StockfishOnline wins Rep. Jonathan Jackson’s 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s First District
Rep. Jackson has named James Hubbard, a 10th grader at University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, as the winner of the 2023 Congressional App Challenge in Illinois’s First District.
When asked what inspired the creation of StockfishOnline, the student said, “Quite simply the lack of it. I needed something that did what this app does. Setting up the stockfish executable yourself and making it work with your project is a lot harder than it should be, and an API is would be much easier. I looked online and found many people not being able to find a chess engine REST API. There were some services that were similar, but had problems like only knowing book theory as opposed to actually evaluating the position on the fly. Some people said it wasn’t possible to make an API because of time constraints. After not having any luck online finding this service, and knowing that many people wanted it, as there were 10k views on some stackexchange posts, I decided to make it myself. Since publishing, I’ve had 50k uses of the API and close to 100k total views and uses. Funnily enough, I don’t remember why I needed this service initially, but it ended up being a successful project of mine, so there you go.”
This year’s Challenge saw an unprecedented level of participation, with 374 Members of the House of Representatives hosting competitions, surpassing the previous record of 340. A remarkable 11,334 students from across the United States competed in this year’s Challenge, marking an impressive increase of nearly 1,000 participants compared to the previous record set in 2019. The enthusiasm and creativity these students display is a testament to the growing interest in technology and signal a bright future for American innovation. The surge of ingenuity continued with a whopping 3,645 original applications flooding in, nearly a thousand more than the previous year’s high. This remarkable growth showcases the exceptional talent and innovation within our nation’s youth.
The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. This resounding show of bipartisan support emphasizes the critical importance of STEM education in today’s rapidly evolving world. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, Rise, theCoderSchool, Apple, and others.
The 2024 Congressional App Challenge will launch in May of 2024, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.