Portuguese school sets world record for largest programming lesson

LISBON (Reuters) – Nearly 1,700 students aged between 12 and 67 gathered at the University of Lisbon’s IST school of technology on Saturday to set a new Guinness World Record for the largest computer programming lesson in a single venue.

The previous record grouped 724 participants in Dallas, in the United States, on Oct. 31, 2016.

“The final total was counted on how many people were here and 1,668 participants were achieved,” said Guinness World Records Adjudicator Paulina Sapinska.

Organisers sought to draw more international attention to Portugal as a growing hub for information technology and to generally popularise computing.

IST chief Rogerio Colaco said computing literacy these days was the same as the ability to read and write 100 years ago, adding this meant “everyone must know a little bit about computer science, about programming, to live in the present world”.

(Reporting by Miguel Pereira; Writing by Andrei Khalip; Editing by Frances Kerry)