On October 12, students assembled for an event aimed at breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest computer programming lesson at a university in Lisbon, Portugal.– Reuters
Approximately 1,700 students, aged between 12 and 67, converged at the University of Lisbon's IST school of technology on Saturday to establish a new Guinness World Record for the largest computer programming lesson held in a single location. The previous record, set in Dallas, United States, on October 31, 2016, involved 724 participants.
Guinness World Records Adjudicator Paulina Sapinska confirmed, "The final tally was determined by the number of attendees, and 1,668 participants were verified." The organizers aimed to highlight Portugal's burgeoning status as a center for information technology and to promote computing education more broadly. IST chief Rogerio Colaco emphasized that computing literacy is now as essential as reading and writing were a century ago, stating, "Everyone must have a basic understanding of computer science and programming to thrive in today's world."
