Programming talents and problem solvers

When it comes to coding, Henri Ahola and Krzesimir Hyżyk are primarily self-taught. The teenagers were between nine and ten years old when they took their first programming steps. While Henri Ahola programmed robots of a well-known building block brand, Krzesimir Hyżyk tried his hand at the programming language Python. "I have taught myself all the other programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, C# and C++", says the 15-year-old. Luxembourg-born Henri Ahola also acquired his knowledge himself or relied on the advice of his acquaintances in the Hackerspace of Bonnevoie, where he worked on his projects. We met them both in the Makerspace of the Forum Geesseknäppchen, where young people tinker with their projects between sewing machines, laser cutters and 3D printers.

That is a second thing the young people have in common: Both have already participated in science competitions a few times. Krzesimir Hyżyk has taken part in the national "Jonk Fuerscher" contest with three projects. For the last edition in 2021, for example, he used artificial neural networks running on his graphics card to calculate a typical meteorological year for the city of Luxembourg. In this way, he detected a temperature increase even over a comparably small period of time. The student was awarded a prize for his project by a jury of the Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg (FJSL).