A young programmer in the making, CV Giridhar is a final-year student of Rajalakshmi Institute of Technology, Chennai. He is an IBM certified RAD developer and a certified Windows Phone and Windows 8 application developer. At the age of 13, he found his calling when he was introduced to programming languages like FoxPro and Visual Basic. Learning C++ in school further developed his interest in programming. “For any programmer, the best prize would be seeing his code being used by others,” says this proud youngster.
He was awarded a Nokia Lumia 800 for developing Windows Phone applications as part of the ‘I Unlock Joy’ campaign conducted by Microsoft India. He and his team also participated in Hackathon, a 24-hour coding contest conducted by Microsoft India at their Tech-Ed event held in Bangalore. They won a Windows 8 developer tablet. He is also a Microsoft Student Partner (MSP). Says Giridhar, “I get a lot of exposure by being an MSP and connect with like-minded individuals.”
Apart from all this, Giridhar is also the PR secretary of CNUG (Chennai Net User Group — Student Chapter). Initiated by Chennai’s own group of MSPs, CNUG Student is an online portal on technology and a meeting place for geeks.
The 21-year-old says, “One of my most memorable incident was at the 2012 Bangalore Windows 8 Hackathon. My teammates and I stayed up all night and coded our first app on the Windows 8 platform.” The app fetches all famous historical events that happened on a particular day including birth dates, deaths and other incidents. This can be shared across social networks. The team won the first prize and they were awarded a Windows 8 developer.
Giridhar dreams to develop apps for iOS (Apple) platform in the future. “Whenever I feel low, I watch Steve Jobs’ speeches and presentations and get inspired by it”, he says. He advices aspiring programmers to concentrate on the basics because, “Once you master the basics, you can code in any language and on any platform.”
— malavikkasridharan@gmail.com