It didn’t feel like a break. It was an acceleration. Days and nights blurred into lines of code, whiteboard sketches, hackathons, and startup events. The kind of summer where you measure progress not by how many hours you worked, but by how many code PRs you get in and people you get to know.

By the end, I wasn’t just better at writing code, I had a stronger sense of what it means to build under pressure, a clearer vision of my values and the kind of founder I want to become, and a true belief in the mindset that everything is possible if you truly try.

Here are some of my favorite parts of the summer.

Software at SalesPatriot

The bulk of my summer was spent at SalesPatriot, where I worked on everything that needed to get done, from full stack, to algorithms, to building IKEA furniture. Two of my favorite projects included RankMaster and a Packaging Cost Calculator. But honestly, what made the experience unforgettable wasn’t just the code. It was the work situation. Everyone was under 22, working late nights on our laptops, bouncing ideas across the room. It felt less like a job and more like an episode of Silicon Valley.

This was the view from my desk setup. Really gets you working.

The house we were living in came with its own flavor of chaos. One morning, we’d hired someone to haul away trash. When we forgot to pay him within an hour, instead of knocking… he came back and dumped his entire truck of garbage onto our lawn. We got him paid quickly after that, and rented U-Hauls to take our trash in the future.

Then there was the new hire who decided to spend most of his yearly salary on a Porsche. I found myself tagging along to a Porsche dealership, not your typical onboarding experience.

Meanwhile, our CEO had this project from high school called Boys with the Bus, where he and his friends bought a bus, renovated it, and drove it across the country, racking up 2M followers. That same bus was parked outside all summer, with his friends constantly drifting in and out of the house fixing it up. The neighbors weren’t too happy 😬.

We had a beautiful hike near the house, Mt. Davidson, the tallest point in San Francisco. I loved to clear my mind and think at the top, with the city stretched out below.

Somewhere along the way, I also became the house avocado toast chef. I made it constantly, for myself, for coworkers, for whoever happened to be around. It was a simple thing, but somehow made the house feel more like home.

Now into what I actually did:

RankMaster was a system to score and rank government contract opportunities so companies could focus on the ones most relevant to them. This meant wrestling with unstructured data, inconsistent formats, and edge cases that broke the code (a lot 😂). I had never built anything like it before, and I only had two days to get a working prototype up and running. That kind of time pressure could have been paralyzing, but instead of trying to solve everything at once, I treated it like a puzzle:

1. Define the end goal: A ranked list that actually reflected reality, not just random scores.

2. Break the problem into steps: Data ingestion, normalization, scoring logic, ranking, validation.

3. Set milestones: Clean the raw data first, nail the scoring logic next, validate quickly after.

4. Focus on function before polish: Make it work first, then make it efficient and elegant. V0 of the algorithm took nearly two minutes per opportunity. By the end of the summer, I got it down to two seconds.

The Packaging Cost Calculator was a very different kind of challenge. Instead of abstract algorithms, this one lived at the intersection of math, UI, and user empathy. The tool helps companies estimate how much it costs to package and ship their products given all the hidden complexities, box sizes, weights, military packaging specifications, that don’t appear until you run a real-world scenario. It forced me to translate raw formulas into a clean, intuitive interface that firms could actually use. Getting the backend math right was one thing; presenting it in a way that felt smooth and reliable was another.

On both projects, I moved constantly between frontend and backend. One day I’d be deep in Python optimization, the next chasing a Svelte rendering bug. I got hands-on with Google Cloud deployment and shipping updates without breaking production, all the gritty parts of real-world engineering that don’t show up in school but matter when customers rely on your software.

I’ve realized building software in the wild means living at the intersection of speed and stability. You’re not just writing code; you’re shipping systems people actually depend on.

YC AI Startup School

From Elon Musk debating AI safety to Sam Altman laying out why conviction matters more than consensus, YC’s AI Startup School was like a dream.

2,500+ builders in one room, hearing directly from the people shaping the future: Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Satya Nadella, Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, Garry Tan, Aravind Srinivas, and more. The energy was electric.

At one point during Startup School, someone casually dropped, “I just hit a PR.” Without thinking, I lit up and asked what feature they’d shipped, assuming they meant a pull request. Turns out… they were talking about the gym. A personal record. It was such an SF moment.

Some of my biggest takeaways:

Live in the future. Build what’s missing.

Garry Tan pointed out that the best startups don’t wait for trends, they create them. That idea stuck with me. Instead of chasing what’s hot, the real opportunity is spotting what’s missing and building it before anyone else realizes it should exist.

Iterate faster than anyone else.

• Sam Altman emphasized that speed of learning is the only moat that matters. Startups don’t win by having perfect ideas; they win by learning faster than competitors and acting on those learnings immediately. Iteration speed compounds, it’s how small teams beat giants.

Velocity > starting point.

• Investors care far less about your pedigree or whether your first version is impressive. What matters is the slope of your progress. A team moving quickly from “okay” to “great” is more valuable than one stuck polishing their “perfect” v1.

Execution beats elegance.

• Andrew Ng drove this home: an ugly prototype in users’ hands is infinitely better than a beautiful design stuck in Figma or your head. Execution creates feedback loops. Elegance can come later.

PMF feels obvious.

• Multiple speakers echoed this: product-market fit isn’t subtle. If you’re still wondering if you have it, you probably don’t. When it’s real, the signs are everywhere, users stick around, demand snowballs, and traction is undeniable.

Breakthrough often comes right after the breaking point.

• Elon Musk told the story of SpaceX’s first three failed rockets. If the fourth hadn’t worked, the company would’ve died. Instead, that was the one that changed everything. It was a reminder that real breakthroughs often come at the edge of failure, you only lose if you stop trying new things and pivoting.

And through all the hype, one theme kept surfacing: the future belongs to those who move fast, but responsibly. It’s not “move fast and break things” anymore. It’s “move fast and build things that matter.” I left those sessions buzzing, not just with ideas, but with frameworks for how to evaluate and prioritize them.

YC Summer Conference

If YC Startup School was about scale, thousands of builders, big names on stage, and big ideas flying around, the YC Summer Conference a few weeks later was the opposite vibe, and I loved that contrast.

Instead of 2,500 people, it was a few hundred, a perfect space to deeply connect. At Startup School, I walked away with frameworks and takeaways. At the Summer Conference, I walked away with friendships. I had time to really talk with people, not just shake hands.

I arrived early, met people in line, and immediately felt that same YC current of ambition and curiosity. Throughout the day, I reconnected with friends from programs like Buildspace and got to spend more time with founders like Selin from Delve and Ethan from CaseFlood.

The talks were phenomenal: • Emmett Shear (Twitch, now Softmax) gave a raw, honest account of launching straight out of school, showing how “not knowing the rules” can actually be your edge. • Han Wang & Hahnbee Lee (Mintlify) walked through their journey from student project to multimillion-dollar company in just three years, super tangible and motivating. • And the YC partners, Harj Taggar, Jared Friedman, and Harshita Arora, hammered home the point: the barrier to starting has never been lower for students.

But the real magic was what happened after. Nobody rushed off. Founders, YC partners, and alumni all stuck around, swapping unpolished stories and real advice. I ended up in a deep conversation with Jared Friedman about how to approach building as a college student. He was genuinely curious about our experiences and feedback, which was exciting to see.

The Summer Conference felt less like a lecture and more like a community, builders figuring it out together. It was inspiring.

Applied AI Cognition Hackathon

One weekend this summer, I found myself in a very unplanned adventure: the Cognition Applied AI Hackathon, judged by Andrej Karpathy and other top people in the field.

I didn’t have a spot on the list. I didn’t even know the venue until the morning of. But I showed up anyway.

I worked with Georg von Manstein, a friend from Buildspace, and Elliot Slusky, a high schooler I’d met 2 days earlier.

We built “Kahoot for politics”, helping politicians understand live constituent sentiment. In just a few hours, we built a website that could:

• Launch surveys and gather feedback in real time.

• Use AI to classify responses by political leaning and track how opinions shift.

• Turn messy data into clean, interactive dashboards you could explore with simple questions.

• Generate graphs instantly from plain English queries.

We ended up getting 3rd place, which was insane and unexpected!

The crazy part was how quickly everything had to come together. No time for perfect designs or deep planning. But that intensity created a flow state where the only focus was making the idea real.

I learned how much a small, scrappy team can get done under pressure. And hearing feedback directly from judges like Karpathy, Russell Kaplan, Bill Chen, Hao Sang, and others was surreal.

Walking out, I realized hackathons aren’t just about building projects, they’re about proving to myself that I can take an idea from zero to something real in a few hours.

The hackathon pitch demo was posted here.

Notable Capital’s NextGen Fellowship and Pitch

Another highlight of the summer was being part of the Notable Capital NextGen AI Fellowship. The program brought together a global group of curious, ambitious builders to learn directly from some of the sharpest minds in tech and venture.

One of the most exciting moments came at the first-ever NextGen Pitch Day, where I had the chance to pitch Songlingo, my app to learn languages through music. Walking away with 1st place was surreal, but even more valuable was the feedback from the judges, Jeff Richards, Claire Vo, and James Cham, who pushed me to think bigger about both product and execution.

Beyond the pitch, the fellowship was packed with incredible conversations. We heard raw stories from founders like Garrett Lord (Handshake), Vineet Goel (Parafin), Steven Wang (dub), and Gorkem Yurtseven (fal), as well as insights from Hans Tung, Notable’s managing partner. Each session left me rethinking assumptions and seeing new possibilities for what’s next in AI.

But what really stuck with me was the community itself. The fellows, students, founders, engineers, came from around the world, yet shared the same drive and generosity. By the end, it didn’t just feel like a program, it felt like a network I’ll stay in touch with and keep learning from for years.

Huge thanks to Esther Kim and the entire Notable Capital team for building such a thoughtful, energizing experience.

Finding Community Outside Tech

Outside of the hackathons, late-night coding sessions, and YC events, one of the most unexpectedly meaningful parts of my summer was becoming part of the Jewish community at Chabad SF. I got close with the other interns staying for the summer. Every week, I’d make my pilgrimage on the Muni to Chabad, probably saved hundreds in Ubers this summer :). Between Shabbat dinners, casual hangouts, and conversations that stretched late into the night, it became a grounding counterbalance to the intensity of the tech world.

There’s something about unplugging from code, sharing a meal, swapping stories, and being welcomed into a warm community that recharges you. It gave the summer a rhythm and a pause, and reminded me that while building is exciting, it’s just as important to take breaks and clear your mind.

City of dreams

SF is a city of dreams. You can walk down Market Street and bump into someone you’ve heard about on LinkedIn. Walking around the city, I suddenly heard: “Adam!” — it was Wilson, a friend I knew from Boston. Encounters like that happened constantly. It felt like the boundary between online networks and real life blurred in San Francisco, and that energy made the city itself part of the experience.

That’s the magic of SF: everyone’s building something, everyone’s in motion, and you’re just one coffee chat away from an idea that could change your trajectory. It’s normal to overhear product pitches in line for boba, or walk past a group debating the future of AGI on the sidewalk. The city runs on ambition, but also on openness, people are genuinely down to meet, collaborate, and dream out loud.

It’s not a perfect place, but there’s nowhere else where possibility feels so tangible. This summer was the first time I felt like I wasn’t just learning tech - I was living it.

My app background

A few months ago, I started building Songlingo, a website to help people learn languages through songs. You can read more about how I built it here. I submitted the website to the Congressional App Challenge in my district, and it ended up winning, out of 50+ other projects.

Day 1

#HouseOfCode started with registration, in the Capitol Visitor Center Atrium, where I picked up my badge and t-shirt. After that, I explored the STEM Inspiration Fair, where I got to talk to representatives from organizations like MIT App Inventor, SMASH Academy, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It was great to learn about all the different pathways into STEM fields.

The rest of the first day was packed with engaging panel discussions and workshops. I really enjoyed the "Launching into the Future" panel, where entrepreneurs like Rayette Toles-Abdullah (Amazon Web Services), Hansel Lynn (theCoderSchool), Elizabeth Dougherty (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office), and Hunter Habersaat (Duke Student and Congressional App Challenge Alumni Advisory Board), shared their stories of building impactful STEM-based businesses. And in the "Digital Trail" fireside chat, I learned a lot from Anitha Ibrahim (Amazon Web Services) and Daniel Kroese (Palo Alto Networks) about protecting my online privacy and managing my digital footprint.

After, there was a great fireside chat covering "The New and More Modern House of Representatives" led by Yuri Beckelman (U.S. House of Representatives), Ananda Bhatia (U.S. House of Representatives, and Taylor J. Swift (POPVOX Foundation). This was an inspiring talk that made me want to eventually get involved with Congress' tech innovations.

Then, we had another amazing panel about the future in AI and AR, led by Joe Darko (Snap), Natalie Lao (MIT App Inventor), and Isabella Hochschild (Dartmouth Student and Congressional App Challenge Alumni Advisory Board).

Day 2

The second day featured student app demonstrations! As part of the Eastern Cohort, I had an hour in the morning to set up my station and get ready to showcase my website, Songlingo. When the doors opened, it was amazing to see Members of Congress, tech leaders, and other attendees checking out all the incredible student projects. I pitched Songlingo to many attendees, handing out business cards, which received a great response. I even got a visit from Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who tried out the app herself, with the song Keep on Loving You, by REO Speedwagon! She is learning Spanish, and mentioned that she is excited to add Songlingo to her study routine.

I then had the opportunity to try new smart glasses from App Challenge sponsors, Meta and Snap Inc. Meta’s includes AI functionality, bringing the power of large language models to wearable technology. The glasses from Snap Inc. are more focused on augmented reality.

Then, my Congresswoman’s office gave me a tour of the Capitol. I got to see the old and new locations of the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the beautiful art in the building. The Capitol Rotunda was quite impressive, with its historically significant paintings and sculptures.

After the demos, it was the Eastern Cohort's turn for the Congressional Keynote session. We heard from representatives like Jen Kiggans, Ted Lieu, Deborah Ross, Zach Nunn, and Becca Balint, as well as Dr. Darin Gray (USC), Jasson Crockett (Snap, Inc), Hansel Lynn (theCoderSchool), Anjali Bhatia (CollegeWise), Sabrina Roshan (RISE), and Victor Foulk (CGI). These speakers discussed the importance of the Congressional App Challenge and the future of STEM education. It was truly inspiring to be in that room, surrounded by so many supportive leaders. We then had a group picture, with the entire Eastern cohort!

I then had the opportunity to view the Western Cohort’s demonstrations. It was inspiring to see what my peers created, and their impact on solving a myriad of problems.

Advice and Reflections

Overall, my experience at the #HouseOfCode event was unforgettable. I got to showcase my work, network with passionate STEM professionals, and meet amazing student innovators from across the country. It was an honor to represent Florida’s 25th district at the Capitol.

Thank you so much to Joseph Alessi (Program Director, Congressional App Challenge), and Ryan Kirzner (Congressional Operations Coordinator). #HouseOfCode was an incredible and inspiring event, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to attend.

Next year, I am considering applying to the Congressional App Challenge Alumni Advisory Board, and hopefully have the opportunity to help plan next year’s #HouseOfCode for all of the future winners!

I would highly recommend applying to your local Congressional App Challenge. To see if your district participates, check this page.

My advice is to code something that aims to solve a problem in your community. It doesn't have to be a mobile app, it could be also be a website, desktop app, or anything else in code. Many other winners used MIT App Inventor to build their apps, which is a powerful tool.

Ideally, build something functional, not just an idea. The judges will be most impressed by apps that are working prototypes, not just concepts. Then, explain the impact and benefits clearly in your submission. Quantify the benefits if possible.

While you are working, get help and constant feedback. Don't try to do it all alone. Reach out to mentors, classmates, teachers, or even local tech professionals to get input and assistance as you're building your app.

Register for the App Challenge

You can register for the next App Challenge here! For any app questions or personalized help with your project, feel free to leave a comment or schedule a call with me here.

Nights & Weekends is a free, six-week, program that is geared towards people who are either working or studying full-time during the week and are excited to devote six weeks of their spare time to advance an idea that they have.

In the beginning, participants pick a goal for the six weeks. My goal was to reach 500+ unique users on Songlingo.

For more information about Buildspace, and their recently raised $10 million from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors like Founders Inc and Y-Combinator, check out this article I wrote for the South Florida Tech Hub.

These six weeks have been the busiest, but best six weeks of my life. With the second semester of Junior year of high school, four AP tests, and multiple trips, it's been a great ride!

Week-by-week progress

Week 1

I was in Boston and New York during the first week visiting family and touring colleges. I watched the Buildspace kickoff live stream in the car on the way back from a college tour. I finalized my idea by Thursday, April 13, and then, Farza, the founder of Buildspace, said that by Sunday, we should have version one of our idea! That got me building, and I started my React project in the car from Boston to New York. I built my v1, which could only fetch a song's lyrics and music video, no translation yet. But that was enough to submit for the first weekly update!

Week 2

After that, I really got to work for the second week. I added the translation functionality for one word, using langchain and ChatGPT API originally, but then switched to Bing Translate API and then Google Translate API. I also researched analytics services, and decided on Posthog, which offers useful features like session replays.

I switched Songlingo to be a Next.js website, from React, which allowed me to call APIs and run server-side functions.

I launched Songlingo on Twitter for the first time on April 24, and got my first user! He helped me realize that the Youtube data API has a very low rate limit, which was causing an error after a few searches. I had to switch it up.

Week 3

I decided on a free NPM package, which allows you to search for a Youtube video and fetch its ID. With this, I embedded an Iframe with the music video and audio into Songlingo.

I then added the full song translation, which was helpful for users.

Week 4

I booked my flight and hotel for the San Francisco in-person Nights & Weekends event!

I added translation to any language, so a song in Spanish could be translated to a song in French, with no English involved anymore! I fixed the reverse formatting of right-to-left languages to make them readable, and then tweeted about both of these features.

I then got feedback that it was hard to read lyrics without line separation by verse, so I reformatted the lyrics and added spacing.

I then bought the domain song-lingo.com, and started spreading the word. I told my language teacher about it, and she used Songlingo during our class to play a song and show the translation! The whole class really liked it!

I added social media share buttons, so users can share which song they are learning!

Week 5

I had an engineering field trip to the Drones in School national competition at the AUVSI XPONENTIAL conference. On the plane, I redesigned Songlingo and made a logo.

I then learned that some users didn't know which song to enter, so they left the website. I added a feature that allows users to retrieve a random song in any language, in case they want to explore new songs!

Week 6

I posted Songlingo in over 30 language subreddits, like r/Korean, r/Vietnamese, r/Spanish, r/Italian and many more. I then watched Posthog analytics, and watched it take off. Within two days, Songlingo broke through my goal of 500+ users, and had 1,500 unique people open the website!

I then added URL params and destructuring, so users can share the link to a specific song.

For more weekly progress, check out my Twitter.

Demo Day

After week 6, we had demo day and the final 32, where we voted on who wins $100,000. It was amazing to see other projects.

IRL (In real life) event

I flew to San Francisco for the Buildspace in-person event, three incredible days of meeting over 250 other builders and improving Songlingo! The energy in the room was amazing, with everyone checking out each others' projects and helping each other! It was inspiring to meet the builders who I'd been building with side by side for 6 weeks!

At night, I went back to the hotel and worked with Rox and Aprilynne on our individual projects until 1:30 AM. I started a newsletter so users can sign-up for updates.

I launched Songlingo on ProductHunt, with the help of Dylan Molina, which got over 90 upvotes, top 15 product of the day, and number 2 education product of the week!

Tylar Campbell, who I enjoyed working with on our projects, helped me record a social media video, which drove a lot of traffic to the ProductHunt post.

The IRL event in San Francisco was great! They had plenty of opportunities to get feedback and improve our products. They hosted an insightful question-and-answer session. And they had great food!

After Buildspace

I added Supabase as a database, as well as authentication so users can sign-up, and save words and songs to listen to later! I added flashcards to the saved songs page, so users can study the words that they saved, Quizlet style!

In order to improve the site performance, I moved the fetch lyrics function to the server side, and I plan on moving other elements as well.

I improved the UI of Songlingo, added Tailwind CSS, and made the buttons more responsive.

Recap

It's been an amazing six weeks, going from nothing to a full product with users. I've never done this before, and I'm so thankful to Buildspace for giving me the opportunity and environment to build.

For years, I've said that I will make a big website or app eventually. Maybe in a year. But I never thought I'd actually do it now, and with Buildspace, it was possible.

Before Buildspace, I was stuck in this cycle of learning HTML, CSS, and JS without React JS, because I thought I wasn't ready for frameworks. But after a few weeks of learning React and Next.js through practice, they are no longer a challenge, both came naturally.

I'd highly recommend Buildspace to anyone, whether you have never built anything before, or whether you are a seasoned builder.

Nights & Weekends Season four starts on August 5th. Apply here!

The school is now offering a six-week, free, online Nights & Weekends program, where creators can pick an idea and build it with the guidance of mentors and peers. Any idea is possible in Nights & Weekends, with projects ranging from software such as AI or blockchain, engineering a bike that powers electricity, or art such as music and films. It’s a place where you can figure out what you’re passionate about, create something you love working on, and then learn how to turn that creation into a financially sustainable path you can pursue full-time.

Nights & Weekends is geared towards those who are working or studying full-time during the week and are excited to devote 6 weeks of their spare time to advance an idea that they have. The program is designed to be flexible and fun, with no lectures or homework. Instead, participants get access to live sessions with mentors and experts. They also get to interact with other builders in a supportive and collaborative community.

During the six-week program, participants decide on a goal for their idea which they work on throughout the entirety of the program. The schedule is pretty simple:

• Week 1: Lock Down Your Idea

• Week 2: Create Version One of Your MVP

• Week 3 - 6: Iterate On Your Idea Alongside Thousands of Others

• End of Week 6: Demo Day

During demo day, participants present their projects including their progress and struggles. 32 participants are picked to compete for a cash prize. Last season, Season 3, Buildspace awarded a total of $100,000 to four builders. A musician, a film maker, a game developer, and a farmer each received $25,000 as support in continuing to build their projects.

Elea Vogli, who is writing an album, Esther Joy, who is creating eco chamber DAO to make community gardening easier, Chaos Town, which is a local documentary series based in Portland, and Hussain, who is creating Split Horizons, a game about a girl exploring imaginary environments and finding a way to go beyond them.

Season 3 graduated 450 people from the program. Their demos are available on the Buildspace website.

Nights & Weekends culminates with events held in both San Francisco and Dubai where participants can finally meet in person, network and showcase their projects.

Buildspace claims that its programs are suitable for anyone who wants to learn new skills and build something cool, regardless of their background or experience level. The company says that its mission is to help people be able to work full-time on their dream creations sustainably. Therefore, Buildspace’s programs are free for users and Buildspace is profitable off of their sponsorship and partnership model.

“I started Buildspace because I wanted to build the school that I wish I had,” stated Farza Majeed, Founder of Buildspace. “When I was going to university, it was very strange for someone to be working on their own ideas and pursue the path of not getting a job. I want to make that a path that is more default.”

Founder Farza Majeed was raised in Pembroke Pines, Florida. He founded Buildspace, originally named ZipHomeschool, in December 2019. ZipHomeschool aimed to build software to help parents homeschool their kids. The company then pivoted to a learning platform for users to explore their career options, mainly in web3 and Artificial Intelligence. Now, Buildspace is primarily focusing on their Nights & Weekends program, as well as a new school in San Francisco, with the first three-month cohort starting in July.

Majeed and the team are looking to grow Buildspace with campuses internationally, making it accessible to people around the world regardless of their visa. Buildspace has a hub in San Francisco, is expanding to Dubai and India and is eventually planning to build a very large campus.

Majeed has advice for people who have an idea but are not sure where to start.

“Don’t overcomplicate it, just get something out there that you are kind of embarrassed by," he stated. "It’s ok to be embarrassed by it. Show other people, because there are not many people in the world who go from idea to showing other people their idea. If you’re already doing that, you are in the minority. Just get something out there, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Very few people understand this, you don’t need a thought together business, it doesn’t even need to make sense, it just needs to make you feel some joy.”

Applications are now open for Season 4 of the Buildspace Nights & Weekends program. The program begins August 5th.

Held at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, the location was a perfect place to bring together those from Miami, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin County and even a few from the west coast of the state. In attendance were software developers, designers, engineers, tech professionals and event school district teachers and college professors from across South Florida.

The event is the only fully regional tech education event FREE and open to the public with classes and sessions running all day long that are completely geared towards STEM and innovation. The event was free to attend, thanks to the support of community partners and sponsors such as this year’s Presenting Sponsor, Cognizant.

The day kicked off with breakfast (sponsored by FAU’s College of Engineering) and 8:30 AM sessions. The first 300 guests through the door were also given a free conference t-shirt (sponsored by Streann Media), and a pizza party lunch was provided for all attendees sponsored by CITY Furniture.

This year’s event featured a Leadership Track and Leadership Lunch in collaboration with Cognizant, CITY Furniture and SIM South Florida. Jeffrey Richman, Customer Relationship Manager and Kishore Dandu, Client Partner of Energy & Utilities at Cognizant addressed the audience as Presenting Sponsor. Kishore spoke about the importance of events such as SoFlo DevCon in the tech community and how proud they are to give back to a local organization helping build the local tech talent. With hundreds of thousands of employees across the globe, Cognizant employs many technical and salespeople in the South Florida region. As tech in South Florida continues to blossom, they are happy to be a contributing part of the ecosystem.

Rebecca Bakels, Software Engineer and Tech Community Advocate at CITY Furniture, highlighted that CITY Furniture is more than just a furniture company. CITY Furniture employs hundreds of people in technology and is using all sorts of innovative tech such as AR, data science, and app development all in-house to ensure the best customer experience. CITY Furniture also gives back thousands of dollars to local community programs and nonprofits each year.

Rebecca is a benefactor of local tech initiatives and the South Florida Tech Hub community. As she began her journey into tech in 2020, she connected with South Florida Tech Hub, completed a Software Engineering course with Boca Code, became an intern at CITY Furniture and then was offered a full-time role to continue with the company. Rebecca is now involved with many nonprofit organizations and initiatives in the tech space in the region.

Each year, the conference attracts almost 1000 attendees and over 100 speakers, sponsors and exhibitors. The event featured 6 time slots for workshops and 12 separate tracks to choose from such as mobile/web development, professional development, entrepreneurship, AI/ML, blockchain & web3, UI/UX, and more. These tracks included a range of topics and workshops, including Machine Learning, AI, VR/AR/MR, IoT, .NET, DevOps, MVC Framework, JavaScript, JQuery, SQL Server, Business Intelligence, Software Testing, Xamarin/Mobile Development, Azure/Cloud, Business/Career Development.

• In the Web Development track, Todd Albert, Lead Instructor and Founder at Boca Code remarked, “This year, we added several code-along workshops to our lineup, including Next.JS and ChatGPT by Jonathan Sanchez, building a game in Unity with SoFlo DevCon’s youngest speaker, 19-year-old Idan Fischer, and my talk where we live-coded a mobile app in React-Native. Each year, the conference seems to be more energetic and attended by more people. It’s always a great place to expand our knowledge and our networks.”

• In the AI/ML track, Founder of Indulgent Gifts and Thrivve Group, Roberta Barbosa, and US Managing Director of Exo Mindset, Bruno Savoca Albors, spoke. Barbosa presented the workshop Intro to Intelligent RPA. The workshop covered “the fundamentals of intelligent process automation and how it is helping businesses become more efficient and increase employee engagement. It also shared the RPA leaders in the industry, the tools available on the market, and the most common use cases.” Albors delivered a talk on the evolution of AI and ML, tracing its journey from early beginnings to the present day. He highlighted key milestones, including the emergence of machine learning as a subfield of AI, the rise of neural networks and deep learning, and the transformative impact of the digital age on AI and ML. Albors showcased modern applications across industries such as healthcare and finance and addressed ethical considerations and challenges, including bias and privacy. In conclusion, he provided a future outlook for AI and ML, emphasizing their significance in solving complex problems and shaping the future of technology.

• In the Web Development track, Todd Albert, Lead Instructor and Founder at Boca Code remarked, “This year, we added several code-along workshops to our lineup, including Next.JS and ChatGPT by Jonathan Sanchez, building a game in Unity with SoFlo DevCon’s youngest speaker, 19-year-old Idan Fischer, and my talk where we live-coded a mobile app in React-Native. Each year, the conference seems to be more energetic and attended by more people. It’s always a great place to expand our knowledge and our networks.”

• In the blockchain track, ApparelMagic CEO and cryptocurrency veteran Brandon Ginsberg, and Azure Migrate & Modernize Lead at Microsoft and Co-Founder of Nebulai, Renatto Garro were two of the presenters. Ginsberg spoke about recent developments in the Ethereum ecosystem, including The Merge, Shanghai updates, and ERC-4337. His talk highlighted the importance of these updates in enhancing Ethereum’s scalability, security, and efficiency, and their potential implications for decentralized applications and the broader cryptocurrency landscape. Garro led the workshop Unlock the Power of Decentralized Identities. “Decentralized Identities promise to change the way we use the Internet giving us more control, security, and the ability to monetize our data,” Garro stated. “We discussed solutions from Microsoft like Entra and PolygonID, among others. It is truly inspiring what developers can start building with this technology.”

• In the AR/VR track, Principal engineer at Microsoft for Mixed Reality, Denise Mendez, Head of Emerging Tech & Innovation Division at PeakActivity, Rob Petrosino, and Harshal Sanghvi, Doctoral Candidate at Florida Atlantic University and Research and Development Specialist at Advanced Research LLC, presented workshops. Mendez talked about the scale of the XR industry, its value in the South Florida economy, and well as how to get started building cross-platform XR experiences in Unity. Petrosino spoke about AI & its impact on 3D, AR & XR. “Generative AI has changed how most organizations and teams will approach visualizing information, floor plans and their standard operating procedures without additional technical teams.” Sanghvi discussed the impacts of AI & AR on Medical Interventions and Imaging as diagnosing and treatment methods.

• In the Leadership track, Founder of B-Grade Media and Technology Advisor at Leafplanner, Q. Wade Billings led the session on “How to engineer a thriving engineering culture”. “In 2019, I had the opportunity to build an engineering culture from scratch, which is more complicated than it might sound,” Billings remarked. “To help my team and me in the effort, we designed a framework called the “Cultural Development Lifecycle (CDLC)” modeled after the well-known Software Development Lifecycle. This framework enabled us to conceive of, plan, develop, test, and measure our thriving engineering culture. My sincere hope and goal are that presenting the CDLC at SoFlo DevCon will inspire others to think about culture in a new and exciting light.”

• In the Entrepreneurship track, was a session, “Practical Steps to Turn Your Idea Into a Revenue Generating Business”, Managing Partner at Argent Strategies and CSO of Doxci, Aaron Chavez, covered everything from ideation to product development to early-stage scaling activities. His talk emphasized the significance of proper solution validation, as well as a heavy focus on non-capital-intensive activities that are accessible to all founders. During his talk, he stressed the significance of South Florida’s idea-rich founder economy and the need for said founders to progress by taking practical and cost-effective steps to move their ventures forward.

One of the unique aspects of SoFlo DevCon is that it is open to anyone interested in the tech and innovation community in South Florida. Attendees did not need to be developers to participate in the conference. Designers, project managers, creatives, entrepreneurs, founders, and anyone connected to the tech industry were all welcome to attend.

Software engineer and game developer presented the workshop ‘Unleashing Your Creativity: Unity game development.’ “Participants learned how to create a game where the player collects coins while avoiding obstacles,” Fischer explained.

“We went through the process of making a game, from making game objects to making scripts to control our objects. Overall, speaking at SoFlo Devcon was an amazing experience, especially for my first time speaking anywhere and first time at SoFlo Devcon. Thank you to everyone who came!”

Idan was also voted the audience favorite receiving the Scott Katarincic Speaker Award, in remembrance of Scott who recently passed this year. He was a major part of planning past SoFlo DevCon events and working with all the speakers to ensure a successful event. It was only fitting that our youngest speaker ever at only 19 years old received the award and on his birthday, no less! The award was presented to Idan by Naomi Gayz, Scott’s girlfiend, and Annette Katarancic, Scott’s mother.

SoFlo DevCon 2023 was a huge success, bringing together the South Florida tech community and providing a platform for learning, networking, and collaboration. The day ended with an after-party happy hour and karaoke!

South Florida Tech Hub’s Dev Con 2023 was made possible because of its sponsors: Presenting Sponsor, Cognizant, Tshirts, Streann Media, City Furniture provided lunch and Telerik by Progress sponsored ASL interpretation. Thanks to the supporting sponsors, including Florida Atlantic University, OZ Digital Consulting, NRG Way, Boca Code, SIM, Algorand, Agile Infoways, Total Wine & More, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft TEALS Program, Code Magazine, FPL, Office Depot, Carrier, Modernizing Medicine, Florida Crystals, Social Mobile, Verizon, and Dedicated IT, for their contributions to the event.

See more photos here.

The event was held at the Boca Raton Innovation Campus, also known as BRIC, which is the birthplace of the first personal computer. BRIC was developed by IBM in the late 1960s as its North American Research and Development facility, and it has been upgraded significantly since then. The campus is the largest single-facility office complex in the state, covering 1.7 million square feet.

Origins of the PC

The event started with a keynote by Dr. Dave Bradley, one of the twelve engineers who worked on the original IBM PC. He is famously known for developing the computer's ROM BIOS code and for implementing the "Control-Alt-Delete" key combination used to reboot the computer. In his speech, he shared insights on early IBM marketing, the release of the first personal computer, working with Bill Gates, and other significant inventions.

Dr. Dave started working at IBM in 1978, on the DataMaster, the precursor to the IBM Personal Computer. He shared struggles that the team had when members of the corporate team tried to help, which delayed the release of the DataMaster until July of 1981.

One month later, the IBM PC was released. Dr. Dave showcased the inside of the PC, with 64 kilobytes of memory.

Dr. Dave described the time that he helped with a sales pitch to the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, aiming to convince them to use personal computers as part of their instruction. They showed a demo program allowing the user to pick a song, which is then played on the two-and-a-quarter-inch speaker. However, there were 30 people in the room. They came up with the idea to plug in a guitar amplifier into the cassette cord. Then, no matter what song the user chooses, The Stars and Stripes Forever is played. They made the sale.

With the original IBM PC, anything additional required plugging in an adapter. One adapter was the color graphics adapter, with a 320 by 200-pixel color display (about the size of an icon today). It came with a demonstration game called Donkey, where a car would move up a road and the user would have to switch lanes to either hit or miss the donkey. Dr. Dave remarked that there is some disagreement about that. Bill Gates wrote the Donkey game program.

During testing of the IBM PC, Dr. Dave frequently had to power the computer off, wait a few seconds, and turn it back on. As a result, he decided to make a shortcut: CTRL + ALT + DELETE. This was never supposed to be used in production, but then the publications team found out about it. They were trying to tell people how to start up a program, and they found the answer with the keyboard shortcut. It took Dr. Dave five minutes to create and has since become an essential element of the user experience and even a "cultural icon". Dr. Dave added that there is a CTRL + ALT + DELETE pillow set, and there was even a snow plow named after the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl Salt Delete) during Minnesota's Name a Snowplow contest. CTRL + ALT + DELETE was also featured on Jeopardy twice.

After the success of the IBM PC, thousands of IBM employees started working on the PS/2 family of products in Boca Raton. They took up so much office space, and even expanded into the Boca Raton mall where a department store went out of business. Dr. Dave remarked that IBM filled all of Boca Raton in order to get the PC developed.

Then, the event held two panel discussions, which focused on the history and future of South Florida's tech ecosystem. These featured some of the trailblazers of modern technology.

History of Technology

The history of technology panel was moderated by Pete Martinez, former IBM executive and founder of Sivotec and RaiseLink, and featured speakers Chris Fleck, a former IBM executive and Vice President and Tech Fellow at Citrix, Maria Hernandez, a former Chief Innovation Officer-LATAM at IBM and CEO of InnoGuia, and Nick Savage, a former Senior NLS Developer at IBM, entrepreneur, and Digital Inclusion Director at CPSF. Each speaker transformed from working at IBM to being executives in new companies.

Hernandez was a developer on IBM's airline reservation system in 1985, which, believe it or not, is still in use as a main system today. She also served as the technical assistant to the senior vice president of research. Her job was to help take research projects to the market faster. Hernandez helped train the voice control in cars' natural language processing algorithm.

Hernandez also created innovation agendas for clients from Latin America and consulted about the value proposition of integrating emerging technology into clients' businesses. She worked with Modernizing Medicine to introduce IBM Watson and AI to the healthcare industry.

Savage worked to sell the DataMaster in 1984 as a summer job while studying AI at the University of Wisconsin. He was then recruited to be Senior Systems Engineer & Product Manager helping to develop the disk operating system (DOS) and modernize the keyboard into a software app. Savage remarked that he knew he was at the forefront of something great. He helped design SQL (Structured Query Language), and all the products building off of the operating system. Savage was in biweekly meetings with Bill Gates, Steven Ballmer, and Paul Allen.

Savage was asked to escort the IBM Personal Computer AT to its announcement in New York. The AT computers took up three first-class seats.

Fleck was a Business Unit Executive at IBM, working on mainframe manufacturing. Fleck turned a lot of IBM technology into commercial offerings, such as IBM branded robots and industrial computers.

Martinez described the innovative department of IBM working long hours on the original PCs. The department was given special permission from IBM to break the rules, to not conform to the old standard of five years of product development and three years of testing. They became a favorite of the company, which came with respect, but also responsibility. Failure was not an option.

Martinez used the RISC chip (reduced instruction set computing), which was very fast, allowing a PC to act like a supercomputer. He and his team worked with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children to do the age progression of children who had been missing for years. This process would take around two weeks for a skilled agent to do manually, but the IBM team reduced this to about an hour. This led to an increase from a 46% to a 78% recovery rate in a year.

Future of Technology

The future of technology panel was moderated by Martinez and featured speakers Vanessa Michelini, a former Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technologist at IBM, and Senior Director of Engineering at Natera, Mark Smith, a former VP and Senior Partner at IBM and President of OZ Digital Consulting, and Ania Rodriguez, a former UX Consultant at IBM and CEO of JourneyTrack.

During the panels, they discussed the biggest contributions of South Florida's tech industry, the largest enterprises, the coolest startups, and companies that made an impact in the industry.

After working at IBM, Martinez decided to dedicate his next stage in life to improving the human condition, primarily in health and education. He created a number of companies, primarily in the AI space, starting with biotech and genomics.

Martinez was a founder of the original group that switched from the hardware to software business. Therefore, he was able to hire many smart people, mostly with MBAs. Martinez remarked that he would not have gotten a job in the business if he had to apply, because he did not have an MBA.

Martinez remarked that his success was a result of leadership and the ability to assemble a team, create a business, and create and drive a significant product to market. Having a technology background and surrounding himself with subject matter experts in the sciences also led to his success.

Martinez also co-founded a fintech company called RaiseLink, which uses a matching engine to link investors with startup opportunities, supported by AI technology.

Michelini worked on applying speech recognition technology to the industry at IBM before moving on to the genomics space. She worked on a project called Watson Genomics, which focused on using artificial intelligence and data analytics to interpret genomics in clinical oncology. Michelini fell in love with the mission of helping people through the combination of biology and technology. She joined Natera, a company dedicated to using genomics to interpret oncology, prenatal care, and organ transplants, after leaving IBM.

Rodriguez started at IBM in 2000, where she worked on building user experience and front-end interfaces, which she excelled at, particularly in accounts that were struggling with their technology. She also mentioned being part of a program for top ten women at IBM, which allowed her to meet many influential people. Rodriguez started her own consulting firm, which ended up being one of South Florida's top women-led businesses. Rodriguez's firm works with Fortune 500 companies to help optimize their digital transformations by focusing on the strategy behind it, rather than the design.

Rodriguez also shared her recent successful venture into SaaS (Software as a service) product creation. However, she has had some difficulties with fundraising, particularly as a woman in the industry.

During his time at IBM, Smith worked in the management consulting group and focused on digital transformation, using artificial intelligence. He also worked on commercializing Watson's natural language processing capabilities to help clients digitize unstructured data in the insurance industry.

During Smith's first project with Watson, he had to help collect and clean up 110 million pages of information about insurance, such as regulations and products, to feed into an algorithm. It took his team 16 weeks, but the same could be done today in around two weeks. The main struggle was to attain trust in the data and algorithm. They had to allow the insurance underwriters the ability to find the page that each piece of data came from.

Now with OZ Digital Consulting, Smith works with startups to help them leverage emerging technologies and solve business gaps. Smith believes that startups are often at the forefront of innovation and offer valuable insights on how to use emerging technologies. He remarks that there are constant changes in the industry, and companies should no longer wait, they should innovate with emerging technologies.

IBM holds thousands of patents, which generate around $3 billion per year. They do not need to build products anymore, instead, they license them. Therefore, IBM technology is used extensively behind the scenes. Martinez made a patent called siesta mode, which turns off the monitor when it is not used for a period of time. He stresses the importance of documenting and protecting personal ideas. Michelini also worked on IBM patents with Martinez, and she held the title of master inventor.

Some well-known IBM patents include the bar code, technology in ATMs, Lasik surgery, and the ability to change a phone's orientation.

Original IBM PC

The Boca Raton Historical Society exhibited a working original IBM personal computer at the event.

Sponsor Message

Brian Callanan from Callanan Financial Advocates opened with a sponsor message.

Callanan arrived in South Florida in July of 1995 and was initially drawn to Fort Lauderdale as a college student due to its reputation as the spring break capital of the world. He later returned to the area after a couple of years of freezing in Boston, seeking a warmer climate and better opportunities.

At the time, the internet and technology industry was rapidly evolving, with companies like Microsoft, Craigslist, Match.com, Amazon, and eBay emerging as major players. Only 12 million people, or 3% of Americans, had logged onto the World Wide Web at that time.

Callanan initially sold telephone systems, voicemail, and data networks before getting involved in the technology community. He was introduced to an organization by a direct competitor and began attending meetings with a small group of like-minded individuals to stay on top of the latest developments. As the group grew in size and influence, Callanan became increasingly involved in regional technology initiatives, eventually serving as president of the South Florida Telecom Forum.

Callanan discussed the importance of private businesses working with universities to build a curriculum that would educate individuals for jobs. During COVID, Callanan wrote a book titled "Women, Widows and Wealth" aimed at business owners who want to sell their businesses. His research showed that 80% of business owners who sought to sell their businesses did not find a buyer. Of the 20% that did, 75% of them regretted the experience. Callanan attributes this to a lack of education among financial advisors on how to handle the sale of businesses. To address this issue, Callanan developed a program called Chief Exec Officer to bring information to business owners on how to sell their businesses and avoid regrettable experiences.

Callanan shared some insights on the current market trends for platform acquisitions. Private equity firms are the main financiers in this space and are actively seeking businesses in the tech and skilled labor sectors. Callanan emphasized the importance of having scalable, bankable profits and transferable value for companies to be considered exit-ready. He also mentioned the importance of effective communication among professionals to avoid costly mistakes. In addition, Callanan encouraged a regional approach to promoting South Florida as a tech hub, highlighting the potential benefits for all businesses in the area.

The event was a great success, and attendees had the opportunity to learn about the journey of South Florida's tech industry, its pioneers, and its future.

Let's say I am trying to web scrape Reddit to get a list of the post names in the subreddit r/programming. I normally have to open up VS Code, start a new project, and remind myself how to use the BeautifulSoup and Requests libraries for web scraping. However, ChatGPT makes it easier than ever to web scrape from sites and save time. Read on for two techniques to web scrape with ChatGPT, the first one can be done fully in the browser, and the second option is more customizable.

Steps for Technique #1: In the browser

1. First, I'll go to a subreddit on Reddit's website. I am using the old layout because it is more accessible to web scrapers, but the content is the same.

2. Open up the dev tools and inspect tab by right-clicking on the page and then clicking on inspect (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + I on Chrome).

3. Then press the button below, which will allow you to hover over any element on the website and see the HTML for that element.

   

4. Then press on one of the titles, and it will highlight the HTML for that post's title.

   

   

5. Then open up ChatGPT. Typing the text below will give you code that you can copy and paste into the console tab of the dev tools. Feel free to change the tag type and class name based on what you are trying to scrape.

   I want to extract posts from a website. The posts are in an <a> tag with the class names "title may-blank". Give me JS code that will extract the first 25 posts and put it in an excel file. I want to run this code in the browser console.

   

6. After a few seconds, the list of the Reddit titles downloads to your computer!

   

This technique is possible without leaving the browser and works great for beginner projects, but is relatively limited when it comes to web scraping. However, ChatGPT can also web scrape with popular libraries like BeautifulSoup, you just have to ask. This is a little more complicated, but much more customizable.

Steps for Technique #2: Python and BeautifulSoup

1. If you type this in ChatGPT, it will give you Python code:

   web scrape data from https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/ using python and beautifulsoup

   

2. Open up an IDE or code editor (I use VS Code), make a new Python file and paste the code in.

3. Sometimes Reddit blocks the request if you try too many requests, so it is a good practice to add your user agent to the headers of the request. User agents help website servers identify where your request is coming from, which makes it less likely to get blocked. Luckily, ChatGPT can help with this too!

4. Asking ChatGPT to add user agents to this beautifulsoup and python code returns the code with this as an update:

   headers = { 'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.82 Safari/537.36'}

   requests.get("https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/", headers=headers)

5. Run the full code, and in the terminal, you see the scraped information!

   

6. One thing you might notice is that the code scrapes the title names, in addition to the user who posted it and the number of comments it has. To get only the titles, you can ask ChatGPT this:

   web scrape only the post titles from https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/ using python and beautifulsoup

7. Now, to save it to a CSV file, just ask ChatGPT to update this code to save the title names in a csv file after running.

8. Quick note, make sure to change the folder that you are in inside of your terminal, because that is where the CSV file will be created. To do this, use the cd command.

9. After pasting the new code in, a CSV file will be added to your folder, and it contains all the article names!

   

Final Code

Here is the final code:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import csv

headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.82 Safari/537.36'
}

# Make a request to the website
response = requests.get("https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/", headers=headers)

# Parse the HTML content
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, "html.parser")

# Find all the elements with the class "title"
post_titles = soup.find_all("a", class_="title")

# Extract the text from the elements
titles = [title.get_text() for title in post_titles]

# Save the titles in a CSV file
with open('titles.csv', mode='w') as csv_file:
    fieldnames = ['title']
    writer = csv.DictWriter(csv_file, fieldnames=fieldnames)
    writer.writeheader()
    for title in titles:
        writer.writerow({'title': title})

print("Titles saved in titles.csv file")

If you would like to add any more functionality, all you have to do is just ask ChatGPT using these same steps.

Conclusion

These techniques are super powerful and can save you a lot of time when scraping websites. A few years ago, I coded a web scraping project that took me hours and hours to finish, but if I tried to redo it now, it would take drastically less time because of ChatGPT.

Comment below what you think about coding with ChatGPT!

2022

In the beginning of 2022, I started volunteering to teach Python to under-served students in New York with Coditum's partnership with Hudson Scholars. After a few months of teaching, Coditum made an additional partnership with the Goldeneye Foundation in Oracabessa Bay, Jamacia. I was asked to volunteer with this program, and I started teaching Python to under-served students from Jamaica.

To continue to improve my programming skills, I also worked weekly with a senior Coditum instructor, who is a computer science major at Dartmouth, on data structures and algorithms. I feel like I learned a lot from him so far.

Around this time, I became the editor-in-chief of my school's newspaper, and I decided to make a website for the newspaper. I wasn't sure what the best tool would be to make it, but I had a few ideas like using Notion as a headless content management system (CMS). A headless CMS is a backend-only CMS that is accessible through an API. I found Notion's developer Slack channel, which I joined and asked about my idea. I got an amazing response from someone who was in the same situation as me. Sam Catania, the current editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily, got back to me and said he used WordPress to make the website for the Stanford Daily. He was super helpful and jumped on a call with me to show me how he built and manages the Stanford Daily's website. I loved it, so I decided to use WordPress for my newspaper. You can check it out here.

I also started the programming team at my school and decided to use Codewars to find problems for our meetings and work on them collaboratively. Codewars is great because instead of only having easy, medium, and hard, they have 8 different levels in the form of Kyu, or martial arts belts. If you have a Codewars account or would like to set one up for free, feel free to follow me and I'll be happy to follow you back.

I took AP computer science principles last school year and got a 5 on the AP test (top 11%). This included making a group final project, and my group decided on a text-based adventure game. It was nice to collaborate with other students. This year I am taking AP computer science A, where I am learning Java.

At this point, I was getting really into web development, but I got stuck on CSS. I took Colt Steele's Web Development Bootcamp last year, which was great, but I felt like I had to do more. I found a great resource called Frontend Mentor, which teaches web development through building real projects. I struggled through my first challenge, using their Slack server for help, but I finally got it.

My next challenges were easier, so I started coding more advanced projects, including responsive ones. Making responsive websites was my next challenge, but then I found a great 21-day free course called Conquering Responsive Layouts by Kevin Powell. This was very helpful in my understanding of CSS.

After making a few responsive projects, I got in touch with Tyrell Curry, a front-end developer who was looking to collaborate on a Frontend Mentor project. I learned a lot about collaboration from this experience and made a great, responsive website called Insure.

After this, I started learning React from a Youtube tutorial by Academind, and then full-stack development with the MERN stack from this Youtube course by The Net Ninja. The MERN stack uses MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, and Node.js. I made a cool workout buddy full-stack application and learned a lot.

Last year I learned to touch type on the Colemak keyboard layout, which is more efficient than the standard QWERTY layout that was designed to be slow to avoid jamming typewriter keys. I learned Colemak on TypingClub, which I recommend. After spending a while only using Colemak, I somewhat forgot how to use QWERTY. Therefore, in 2022, I relearned how to use the QWERTY layout so that I could still type on other people's laptops without Colemak. Keybr was very helpful to relearn QWERTY as it uses your accuracy statistics to target the letters that are most challenging for you.

Recently, nearing the end of the year, I got in touch with a great programmer, Geoffrey Huntley, who was super helpful. I learned so much in one call, owning your own domain, servers and hosting, SSH, blogging, the IndieWeb, and more.

This led me to buy my domain (adamelitzur.com) and make a programming portfolio. I designed and coded my portfolio using AdobeXD, HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Searching more about the topics that Geoffrey Huntley mentioned led me to the cybersecurity Youtuber Network Chuck, who I couldn't stop watching. I was captivated by the field of cybersecurity and decided to start learning with TryHackMe's Advent of Cyber. I fell behind a little while building my portfolio and finishing up with midterms for the first semester of school, but I am excited to continue this course early next year.

I listened to a Ross Tech & Innovation Alumni Association talk by Dave Cole, CEO of OpenRaven, which offers data classification for security. He mentioned the podcasts Security Voices and Darknet Diaries, and the book The Cuckoo's Egg, which I started listening to and reading. They are great and it's hard to put them down.

Next Year

I'm excited to continue to improve my web development skills with React, get better at teaching, and learn as much as possible about cybersecurity next year. Next school year I am taking a cybersecurity course that leads to a CompTIA Security+ certification. I am also going to start blogging regularly, which is exciting.

Please add a comment with the areas that excite you the most or with any questions and I'll be happy to expand on these further.

Happy holidays!

Dev Retro 2022

About Me

I'm going into 11th grade, and I love everything to do with computers! My first interaction with programming (and my Hello World program) was at a summer camp in 2018. I started with Python, but didn't get really advanced until two years later, in March of 2020. I had a lot of free time, so I got Colt Steele's Modern Python 3 Bootcamp. It was an amazing course, and after completing it I felt like I knew how to program. Little did I know, I haven't had my first encounter with data structures and algorithms yet. Anyways, after that, I learned some automation with BeautifulSoup and made my first real project, a social media scraper that saved my Dad many hours of repetitive work. The scraper took a spreadsheet of names, searched for each person, and pasted their bios into the spreadsheet.

I then took Harvard's Introduction to Computer Science(CS50), which taught me more about data structures and algorithms. Boy was that a challenging course, but David Malan, professor of computer science for CS50, is an amazing teacher. He really got me thinking like a programmer. David Malan teaching CS50

In January of 2021, I got into web development and started Colt Steele's Web Developer Bootcamp. It's a great course, but I made the mistake of rushing through it (like watching four and a half hours of lectures in one day). But because I rushed it, I didn't remember much of the course.

I did some research on how to solidify my knowledge and decided to start making projects to review the content that I rushed through. I started working on these projects, mainly Frontend Mentor challenges. I slowly started improving CSS, and now, I feel much more comfortable with CSS. I just finished my first collaboration on a project, which taught me a lot about using Git for collaboration. My next step is to review DOM manipulation, which I'm using Scrimba's Learn JavaScript for free course for.