BENGALURU: It may have been his second attempt in participating in the Google Code-In online competition, but this time, Sachin Ramamoorthy (16) was the only South Indian to have grabbed a position among 50 winners across the globe. Receiving the results in January, Rammoorthy, along with his mother, is all set to fly to Googleplex in Mountain View, California, to collect his prize.
Several open source organisations such as Wikimedia, Drupal and Redhat partner with Google and publish tasks for students to complete during the 50-day event. Eventually, each organisation selects two Grand Prize winners from around the world who contributed the most to open source.
“In October 2017, when I first heard of the competition, I jumped into the fray. I partnered up with an organisation called Liquid Galaxy, which produces solutions that incorporate immersive video displays, and started to contribute to open source.
At the end of the two months, I became a global finalist, but couldn’t reach the top. This time, I was even more determined not to give up, and try again,” said an ecstatic Rammoorthy, who had self-studied his way up to the competition since sixth grade. He is now a Class 11 student at Stonehill International school.
Devoting at least four hours every day for over 50 days, solely to the competition, Rammoorthy had to find the right balance and juggle between school and completing the tasks. “I would reach home from school by 4pm and then complete my homework and study.
Post 7 pm, I would immerse myself into completing the tasks given and sometimes had to work long nights,” he said, adding that he had completed 51 tasks involving Android app task, machine learning and artificial intelligence, programming with drones, debugging, removing errors from programs etc, which were all given a set time limit depending on the difficulty level.
“We are proud of what he has achieved,” said his parents Madhu and Padma, a chemical engineer and doctor, respectively. As of now, Rammoorthy runs a podcast called Career Central, which interviews professionals from various spectrum to help high school students decide their career path. Apart from that, he is also a huge RCB cricket fan and loves swimming during his free time.