When 13-year old Misha Mykolyshyn from Kyiv competed in a software development contest for the first time, he got a standing ovation. On that day, he, together with his team, presented at the Proffstore Hackathon an idea for an electronic grade book called “GradeGrade.” He then participated in Intel ISEF (the International Science and Engineering Fair) and Golden Byte organized by a computer academy. However, he considers the victory at NASA International Space Apps Challenge Kyiv, where his team presented its Dictionary of Earth project, his biggest achievement. The innovative Kyivan is now 16 and dreams of developing products that are useful to people.
“I love doing something from scratch. When you only have an idea in your head: ‘This is what’s missing, and this is what I need in order to achieve this.” You take the idea, tackle it, and you do it!
At the NASA International Space Apps Challenge hackathon, I needed to develop all the software and design within 24 hours. Two of my classmates wrote the content for the website we were developing. And a third prepared the presentation.
The NASA Space Apps Challenge is a programming marathon run by the American Space Agency. It’s held every year for adult developers. And then we show up! Every time I participate in a hackathon with a team that are the same as me, people look at us, surprised, as if they want to ask: ‘What are you doing here, kids?’
I know our age can be an advantage. If we make some minor mistakes, judges might turn a blind eye to them. But there are still a lot of things we have to work hard on in order to win a top place.
The theme of the NASA 2017 hackathon was the Earth, and observing it from space. We developed a project for a dictionary of the Earth called ‘TermWorm,’ which allows any person to understand scientific articles about Earth. This is achieved thanks to a special algorithm that is applied to a scientific article and produces short and plain definitions of all terms.
We were the winners in the People’s Choice category at the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Kyiv. We got the votes of the biggest number of teams that participated in the challenge. It was a great surprise for us.
In the global vote, there was a total of 2017 projects, and we placed 17th. This was also a very good result for us.
At the moment, TermWorm exists only as a prototype. There’s a lot to be done before it can be fully implemented.
Studying in school takes too much time and you simply don’t have the time for something else. I can work on my projects maybe for an hour a day.
I’ve had a computer since I was two. I still remember the dial-up modem that woke me up every time my parents accessed the Internet.
Then I began playing different games, and I played a lot. With time I became interested in how to develop them. That’s how I learned about programming.
I learned to code at home on my own. No special courses, just self-education. Interest and time is actually all you need for this.
For me, it will be simply wonderful if I can develop my own product and be involved in it for a great part of my life.
Naturally, you need to make at least some money from it. But I’m not setting the target for myself of making a million dollars. My goal is to do something to make the world a better place, to do something for people.
In 10-20 years I’d like to be the CEO of my own company, some startup. Maybe it will be a big company I’ll be working for. Everything could change so much in 20 years, so it’s very difficult to predict this.
Even in 10 years, everything could change so much that, maybe, everything that I’m doing now will become useless. However, no matter how technology develops, it’s people that come up with creative tasks. Creativity is something that nobody can take away from people.
In 20-30 years, I’d like to see Ukraine as a progressive European country with the same standards of living, quality of education and labor conditions as in other EU countries.
We have a lot of progressive and smart people that have huge potential, but who cannot fully unlock it here. That’s why they move abroad, start living there, and unlocking their potential there.
But if we build a normal ecosystem to develop projects here, it’s possible that people from abroad will instead come here to develop their products.
Computer technologies are forever. They are the integral part of our lives. Other branches of science develop thanks to them. Without computer technologies, science would simply come to a standstill, because science involves many complex calculations that only computers can do.
At the moment, quantum computers that will operate at lightning speed are being developed. This will be an even bigger breakthrough in computer technologies. It will be the same as when transistor computers appeared instead of the vacuum tube ones. There’ll be the same type of breakthrough with quantum computers.”
