Ahead of Demo Day: LinguaCode- programming for teenagers

In early 2015, Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia (MIC) Foundation organized MIC Acceleration program with participation of 7 local startups.

In April 2015, Demo Day of MIC Acceleration will be held during which teams will present the results of the work of past months to the Armenian and foreign investors and entrepreneurs.

Ahead of Demo Day, MIC Armenia and Itel.am present the history of development of each the 7 startups.

LinguaCode is a multilingual platform aimed at teaching children programming skills from an early age.

It allows teenagers to learn programming based on C# language.

The platform was developed by Arman Yeghiazaryan, Aghvan Apoyan, Michael Nalbandyan and Vanuhi Davtyan.

“I had the idea of teaching basic programming to children at age 10-14, because today’s world is developing in such a rapid speed, that sooner we start learning certain skills, highly demanded in the market, the better,” Aghvan Apoyan says to Itel.am.

He talks about how he and Arman Yeghiazaryan presented this idea at Gyumri Hackathon/yan/ 2014 in the framework of Innoweek and were awarded with a prize.

“It gave us motivation and served as a kick-off for future applications to various programs and further development of the idea”, says Aghvan Apoyan.

Microsoft Innovation Center’s MIC Acceleration program brought together also Mikayel Nalbandyan, a back-end developer, and Vanuhi Davtyan, a web designer.

According to Arman Yeghiazaryan, the programming code in the software is written in the mother tongue. When a teenager acquires basic programming skills, he moves on to professional programming languages.

''Throughout the program the team has learnt how to work in team, share responsibilities, and come to a single conclusion after discussion of various aspects of the project. During this process, we faced difficulties which would be impossible to overcome, according to many. But now I'm sure that there is no problem without a solution. Despite the fact, that before the kickoff, our team comprised my friends and fellow students, we got to know each other's good and bad traits, we understood what is it to be a team. We learnt to work with each other, listen to and understand each other and agree upon decisions'', notes Arman Yeghiazaryan.

LinguaCode platform will be fully ready till April 26.