The School of Information Science and Technology (SISTECH) of Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) was back again with its annual event, National Programming and Logic Competition or PROLOG 2018 for High School and Vocational High School students. This event was held to encourage the development of logical thinking for high school students as the base of decision making. Logical thinking needs to be nurtured since early age, especially for students who are about to continue their studies to computer engineering. Because with logical thinking, a programming language can be well formulated, and it is also needed to test the precision of a certain program.

PROLOG 2018 consisted of several events: Tag the Tag competition, Public Seminar, and Exhibition. The Tag the Tag competition is a ‘finding the trace’ competition which was followed by 100 teams from various high schools from all over Indonesia, some of them came from the Java Island, Bali, Kalimantan and Sumatera. The participants have followed a previously held online preliminary held on September 7, 2018 and there were 30 teams who are selected to move to the semifinals on September 27, 2018.

In the semifinal, the teams are given a number of problems about programming and logical thinking in the form of games located in several locations inside the UPH campus. After that, all of the teams with the fastest time and biggest score will come out as the 10 finalists who will fight for the grand prize which will announce in the same day.

According to Hery, a lecturer in SISTECH UPH who was also the Head Committee of PROLOG 2018, this competition was made to increase high school students’ interest and awareness regarding technology, and also as a mean to introduce UPH campus’ environment.

“The developments of technology nowadays are getting more and more advanced, and the impacts aer not always positive. So, in orer to take care of the negative impacts, a good logical thinking which is based on a good character is very much needed. Aside from that, students who are interested on the computer science are also very welcomed here,” said Hery.

The Tag Tte Tag competition was won by the TITIK team from SMAN 1 Depok who came out as the 1st winner; Bandeng Aiwa Bro Team from Sekolah Dian Harapan Daan Mogot came out as the 2nd winner and Tim GS GO 2 team from SMAK Penabur Gading Serpong also came out as the 3rd winner. The winners of this competition are awarded with cash which reaches Rp18.000.000 in total, as well as a certificate.

Aside from competition, the participants also followed a public seminar with the theme ‘Industry 4.0’ which was presented by I Made Murwantara, Ph.D, a software engineering experts from University of Birmingham, UK, who is also a lecturer of SISTEC UPH.

In addition to the development of the world’s industries, Murwantara also talked about Data Science Workflow and the impact of refined technology in these days towards data leaks related to personal privacy. “If we want to avoid data or privacy leaks, stop using the internet. But because doing so in this kind of era is almost impossible, thus we need to have wisdom in uploading data to the internet, and this is where data science plays its role in predicting the effect of every uploaded data,” said Murwantara.

PROLOG 2018 also consisted of an exhibition event which was held at the UPH park on September 24-27, 2018. In this exhibition, the works of SISTECH UPH students were showcased such as computer programs, games, as well as the istalluph.com website, which functions as a document printing service and paid computer projects service, all created by the students.

Another interesting project is a computer program that measures one’s height when a person walks pass the sensor which has the accuracy up to 98%. The sensor uses the same principal as a bat’s ultrasonic wave which gives them the ability to echo-locate things from the wave’s travelling time. This project is an ongoing collaboration between students and lecturer of SISTECH UPH, which will undero some further research.

Overall, SISTECH UPH hopes that through PROLOG 2018, they are able to open up the awareness of more students about the importance of logical thinking as a great start for the students who are about to continue their studies in the university, especially for those who are interested in computer engineering. (it)