Context
Hindustan Times required a first-of-its-kind digital platform to introduce coding to school students across India, hosting coding courses, quizzes, and a high-concurrency national coding marathon.
Case 02 · cyan channel
HT Codeathon
India's premier nationwide coding initiative & marathon for school children
The problem
What was being asked
The solution
What was built
Slip 1
Engineered an interactive student learning and assessment portal using Vue.js and Laravel, supporting varied age brackets and skill curriculums
Slip 2
Designed robust contest evaluation pipelines capable of scoring student code submissions with real-time leaderboards
Slip 3
Optimized database schemas and server caching to sustain massive traffic surges during national marathon rounds
The architecture
How it holds together
Vue.js SPA + Laravel API
A highly responsive single-page application communicating with normalized Laravel REST APIs for lesson progression and contest submissions.
Automated Evaluation & Leaderboard
Queued background evaluation workers that score code challenges and push instant leaderboard updates without blocking user sessions.
Key Metrics & Impact
Demonstrated Results
- 100k+ participating students across India
- 99.95% uptime during nationwide marathon
- 3.5× increase in student engagement
Challenges
The parts that tried to break it
Concurrent exam submissions
Thousands of students submitting code within the same minute. Solved using asynchronous queue workers and database write batching.
Child-friendly accessibility
Streamlined navigation, high contrast UI, and keyboard-friendly controls designed specifically for young students.
Decisions
Calls somebody owns
Vue.js for student experience
Allowed fast client-side rendering of interactive tutorials, video lessons, and interactive quiz components.
Redis queue workers for grading
Decoupled code submission ingestion from code evaluation to ensure zero timeouts during peak contest windows.
Learning carried forward