20 Jan 2025
In September 2021, I began my studies at a private STEM high school. Motivated and eager to learn, I convinced my parents to sponsor my studies and allow me to live in the dormitories far from home. Although acclimatization was tough, looking at the past four years retrospectively, it was worth it.
I enrolled in "Delta TopGun", a newly created talent program established by the school in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, whose name is derived from the famous film Top Gun. Tailored towards motivated students who had programming experience before starting their high school studies. Joining this program allowed me to work on my personal projects and improve in topics that interested me instead of spending time in classes that taught topics already known to me.
I had to prove my proficiency in topics covered by regular school classes before entering the program and that by demonstrating my knowledge by passing final exams with flying colors at the beginning of my junior year. After entering the program, I was excused from mandatory lessons. In exchange, I had to participate in competitions to represent the school. I also had to attend lectures on advanced topics usually touched upon at universities. One of the outputs of these university-level classes for high school students, is my algorithm repository from this period.
Without further ado, here are some of the accomplishments
The "Young Talent of the Pardubice Region" award recognizes exceptional students for their success in competitions or contributions to areas like fair play, volunteering, and charity. Read more on the school's blog.
Awarded as one of the four most successful high school students in the Pardubice region for 2023/24, recognizing exceptional knowledge and skills. Read more on the school's blog.
Awarded third place at the Science and Technology festival. Read more on the school's blog.
The Student Trainee Center is a two-year-long student program run by Microsoft. The main focus is on high school students eager to learn and share their knowledge.
The program is divided into "action groups". I was assigned into an action group focused on programming, in which, among other things, I learned to write articles on technological topics. You can read one of the articles I published at that time here.
We were taught a variety of topics, but did so almost exclusively with proprietary technologies. This, for instance, included Microsoft Azure, .NET, AD, Visual Studio, Teams, Windows Server and others.
F# is a high-level, strongly-typed, functional-first programming language developed by Microsoft. We were lucky enough to get lectures from a Microsoft software engineer working full-time on the F# compiler. What I did not expect to learn in these lectures was that most open-source contributors live in basements, are notoriously difficult to communicate with and produce unmaintainable code that rarely makes it to production. With the rebranding of open source many large corporation are attempting - like it or not - I was truly astounded to hear this inside one of Microsoft's conference rooms.
The second half of the program mainly focuses on the student's graduation project, as they then must defend it in front of a committee to successfully complete the program. I finished the program by gaining the diploma.
I had the opportunity to speak about HTMX at the Frontend Lightning Talks in Pardubice in 2023. You can watch the compressed video (11 MB) of my talk below or follow this direct link to the uncompressed video (45 MB).
The most secured hackathon I have ever been to.
The government administration organizes a nationwide hackathon each year called "HackujStat" (Hack the State). To participate, you must first be nominated by, for instance, winning a regional hackathon. The hackathon is considered to be highly competitive, as the teams are formed by people who have been to many hackathons before. My team and I placed second only after a team of PhD graduates. Even attendance is considered an accomplishment - getting a placement, like we did, even more so.
The hackathon took place at the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ), an institution responsible for auditing public finances. Upon entering the building, we were swarmed by a dozen police officers and had to undergo metal detector scanning. I took the longest to get processed since there was, what the police officer thought, a suspicious item in my bag.
Foxconn organizes a hackathon each year. Below are the hackathons I have attended.
Achieved first place in the Foxconn funovation hackathon. Got awarded by Allan Keown, the general manager of Foxconn CZ. Git repository hosting the project.
Second place in the Foxconn funovation hackathon. Git repository hosting the project. School's blog post.
Second place in the Foxconn funovation hackathon. School's blog post.
First place in a regional hackathon organized by the university of Hradec Králové. Git repository hosting the project. School's blog post.
Third place in a regional hackathon organized by the university of Hradec Králové. Git repository hosting the project. School's blog post.
In December of 2022 I started an internship in Nextap solutions s.r.o. - I was awarded for completing the internship program and began working as a professionally as a software developer.
