Coding classes in East Dunbartonshire

The learner copies the eight section distances from the official website into a Python list: 12, 15, 14, 12, 9, 10, 9 and 15 miles. The first job is a check. In miles, the sections add up to exactly 96, matching the route total. In kilometres they add up to 152.3, while the site gives 154 for the whole route. Neither figure is wrong: each section is rounded separately, and rounded parts need not add up to a rounded total, which is why careful analysts never build a total by adding rounded pieces.

A plan is a choice of which of the seven overnight stops to use. For five days that means choosing 4 of the 7, and there are 35 ways, few enough to try them all. The program keeps the plan whose longest day is shortest. Adding a fifth day to a four-day plan only cuts the longest day from 27 miles to 26, because the sections cannot be split and the long middle stretch has to go somewhere. Adding a sixth day cuts it to 21. Where the stopping points lie matters as much as how many days you have.

The learner then compares a quick rule of thumb: keep walking until the next section would take you past a target, then stop. With a 20-mile target it produces a seven-day plan whose longest day is 19 miles, matching the exhaustive search. Trying everything is fine for eight sections, but it does not scale: a route of 100 sections split into 10 days has 1,731,030,945,644 possible plans. That is where cleverer methods such as dynamic programming earn their place.

So a young person in East Dunbartonshire should learn to code in 2026 to tell a good plan from the optimal one. The longer argument is in why teenagers should still learn to code in 2026.