DevLingo

Inspiration

DevLingo was inspired by the challenges teens face when trying to learn coding. Traditional platforms can be intimidating, especially for beginners, and many schools, especially in underserved areas, do not offer adequate coding classes. This gap limits opportunities for young people to pursue careers in technology and STEM. Our goal is to make coding education accessible, engaging, and fun for all teens, regardless of their background!

What it does

DevLingo is an interactive web platform designed to teach programming to teens through gamified lessons and quizzes. It allows users to progress at their own pace, covering a wide range of programming languages through a mix of theory and practice. The platform also includes AI-powered assistance to help students when they get stuck, and it fosters a community that encourages collaboration and peer learning.

How we built it

We built DevLingo using NextJS for the frontend to handle content rendering and navigation. For the backend, we used Python Flask to manage routing, user login, and data storage, which is handled via SQLite. To enhance the learning experience, we integrated uAgent and Google Gemini AI for real-time assistance, helping students by answering their coding questions and providing explanations. The platform also uses a speech-to-text feature for more interactive support.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we encountered was integrating the AI assistance in a way that was both responsive and useful for beginners. Another major challenge we faced was implementing an interactive quiz system that dynamically loads the correct set of questions based on the user's progress through different chapters. The complexity arose from structuring the quiz data to align with the various sections and chapters while ensuring the quiz logic handled different states like loading questions, tracking answers, and providing feedback. We struggled with accessing the correct quiz data, as our data structure was nested across multiple chapters and sections, and mapping the correct quiz to the user's input required careful handling of indices and state. Initially, we ran into issues with incorrectly rendering quizzes, and in some cases, no quiz would appear at all due to mismatches in how we were referencing data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we learned

What's next for DevLingo

In the future, we plan to expand DevLingo by adding more advanced programming languages and topics. We aim to introduce a leaderboard and a coin-based rewards system to increase motivation. Additionally, we plan to offer memberships for schools and parents, enabling broader access and engagement. We also envision incorporating more community features, such as coding challenges and peer-to-peer tutoring, to further enhance collaborative learning.