With coding soon to be implemented into the syllabuses of national schools, it’s evident enough that the advancement of technology requires youths to be more savvy with computers in order to develop.
But when we talk about coders, the term itself usually gives the image of young working adults or older who have developed their skills through years and years of hard work and practice.
However, there is an emerging population of teens who code and have quite an extensive knowledge about it while they’re still balancing their school life. To give some spotlight to these youths with a passion for coding, here are 4 coders that are known within the scene to have used their knowledge for their creations.
1) Manojkumar Subramaniam
This 17-year-old made headlines with his performance at the hackathon, JomHack, where he managed to build his own LoRa (Long-Range Low-Power End Node Solution) device which is considered a big feat considering the technology is not common in Malaysia just yet.
Having only begun his coding journey earlier this year in February, he states that his knowledge was initially self-taught as he needed to know coding to instruct micro-controllers which were needed as he was exploring passion for robotics.
2) Muhamad Firdaus Ali
Starting his web development journey at the tender age of 8 with Joomla CMS, he continued to pursue his coding passion by learning the fundamentals through a Startup Teens programme organised by MaGIC and StartupMalaysia in conjunction with GREAT2014.
Now at 15-years-old, this young coder is in the initial stage of working on his own groceries e-commerce service called Grocern but has stopped at the user interface/user experience development phase as he had to focus on his PT3 examinations. He has stated that development for Grocern will continue after he is done with that.
Compared to his peers, he’s already actively thinking of startup ideas and showing a spirit of entrepreneurship, and this bodes well for his future. As a secondary school student, he still has a long way to go, but if he keeps this up, he should achieve a lot more in the time to come.
3) Mohamad Isma Daniel Bin Abdullah
His interest of coding began at the age of 14, but he only began truly pursuing it when he founded his own app called WinApp which is a social media tool that integrates money transfer, photo editing, artificial intelligence and chat app all in one. The app will be available for iOS and Google Play soon.
Now at 17, he is able to develop software for iOS and Android clients and can code Erlang. His future plans include him focusing on WinApp while balancing the remaining year of his secondary school life before being able to fully concentrate on that.
4) Zi Song Yeoh
Familiar in the scene of online competitive programming, this 15-year old from Penang has been active in the coding scene for 3 years now and shares his coding experience and knowledge with others on coding websites. He has also shown his talent in other subjects such as participating in a Mathematics Olympiad last year.
Unfortunately, our youngsters may not receive full exposure to the tech scene due to lack of support or knowledge of what to do next. So it’s important to nurture these young talents to make sure they can continue to grow and expand their knowledge because it is these young coders who will join the tech ecosystem in the years to come.
Do you know of any other young Malaysian coders that should be featured? Comment down below.
Feature Image Credit: lyndersaydigital.com