As many future coders Stanislav, Mikhail and Nodir started studying programming in high school. They also were interested in video games, so programming was a tool for solving difficult game tasks and even developing their own ones. Their interest motivated them to learn by themselves and look for extra information in the Internet. «Programming is not well-developed in Tajikistan where I was born. I didn’t have any teachers or supervisors. My parents didn’t even know that I learned to code,» shares Nodir Daminov.
Many Russian schools don’t offer programming as a discipline. Thus students had to go beyond the school curriculum — they exchanged information with more experienced secondary school students and asked teachers to share some useful resources for learning. Their supervisors and friends also told them about ITMO University. Having reached a high level they started to participate in coding contests and Olympiads for young programmers.
«CodeForces.com often organizes competitions. Our champion Gennady Korotkevich places first in its' ranking. Once I read about his participation in the contest and realized that several years ago he used Pascal. Everybody starts small!» notes Mikhail Putilin.
According to Stanislav Naumov, his first programming language was C#, Mikhail used a script language of one of the games, while Nodir used C++ from the very beginning.
In the future, these coders also plan to compete with other programmers at more prestigious international contests. They are also interested in computer-aided learning technologies and mobile apps.
In order to develop their professional skills and obtain experience young coders chose different approaches. Mikhail applied to Summer Computer School where he took a course in applied coding. «We developed a website using django framework using python language. Furthermore, several years ago I participated in the Summer School for Young Coders where we developed our own languages and compilers for them.»
Stanislav still works on the project launched during the final year together with his friend. «This is a messenger for several social networks like Vkontakte, Facebook and Telegram. It is easier to use one app at a time rather than on several.» According to Nodir, he has not made a decision about the application of his knowledge but currently he spends lots of his free time coding.
The students are very ambitious about their future career. They dream about internships and then working at large IT giants such as JetBrains, Google, Facebook and Yandex.
