Introducing æternity’s Elixir Team [Part 2]

After introducing the team leads, it is time to meet the young talent behind æternity’s Elixir implementation.

In Part 1 of the series, we introduced you to the mission and leaders of æternity’s Elixir team. For Part 2 we decided to ask the younger members of the æternity’s dev crowd about their development experience, blockchain technology, Elixir, and the reasons behind their involvement in the project. You can read their answers below.

Artur Puzio

Artur has been interested in IT since his early childhood, his journey with programming began with simple programs for programmable Casio calculators when he was just six years old. The more serious work began when Artur started middle school and he learned C++ for algorithmic contests.

Having made it to the finals of the Polish Middle School Programming Contest, after 6 months of learning Artur became extremely motivated and continued refining his skills by attending various camps and after-school classes, and three years later he won 1st place in the Baltic Olympics in Informatics (2015). Following this achievement, Artur then decided that Olympics’ tasks were not best-suited for him and he began exploring alternative academic and engineering parts of Information Technology, which is how he got to where he is today. Artur is currently a freshman with a Computer Science major at Warsaw University, as part of his Inter-faculty Individual Studies.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
I enjoy baking and the majority of my cakes turn out to be quite good. However, the success rate does not come from me being a talented cook but I instead that I am simply afraid that if I don’t follow the recipe word for word, instead of me eating the cake, the cake will eat me!

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
Blockchain technology is a significant breakthrough in decentralized consensus and I think it is fair to say that Satoshi’s paper created a new current in IT. The different blockchain designs being explored by dev teams globally are truly fascinating.

Why Elixir?
I believe the functional paradigm is the future of secure programming. Inside the functional paradigm, all concurrency and procedure execution side-effect issues are non-existent. Such possibilities are simply removed. Similar in the case of many beautiful things, they are not very useful, so we have to compromise. Elixir is a functional programming language with the bare minimum added to make it usable for all kinds of applications, while at the same time keeping as much of the security and separation from functional paradigm as possible.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
Working with æternity is a great opportunity to learn about the details of modern blockchains. The opportunity to be a part of blockchain research team in a company composed of great minds is a realization of my intellectual aspirations.

Nedelcho Delchev

Nedelcho is an Elixir Software Developer. After studying System Programming in High School, Nedelcho is now is completing his Bachelor Degree in Computer and Software Engineering at the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Having worked on implementing an application for guitar enthusiasts, taking part in developing DSL running on JVM and participating in an Eclipse Open Source Project, Nedelcho has substantial experience in Android.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
The thing that fascinates me the most about blockchain is the stable and secure decentralized structure. The chaos it creates globally, especially for people who are unfamiliar with this technology also excites me.

Why Elixir?
Before I began working with Elixir I had no experience using functional programming, it is quite different but at the same time intriguing. Elixir provides tools that make your job as a programmer a lot easier. The concurrency and distribution, as well as the error-handling coming straight from the EVM, is simply wonderful.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
Working with æternity provides me with a new challenge and an opportunity to gain more knowledge and experience, as well as new social contacts within the space. I’m very excited to meet and work with new people who are as passionate as I am about blockchain technology and Elixir, and I feel that we are the people pushing blockchain forward.

Bozhidar Nikolov

After studying System Programming in high school, Bozhidar Nikolov is now studying Computer and Software Engineering at the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, with relevant experience in web programming — both front-end and back-end.

Tell us a fun fact about you?

I wanted to become a footballer.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
I find it fascinating that it is nearly impossible to cheat a public blockchain.

Why Elixir?
We wanted to provide an alternative to Erlang implementation and what better alternative than the language that runs on the same VM? Elixir lets us easily divide tasks into separate processes, which is exactly what we need, while also letting us write structured and easily understandable code.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
It is an exciting and new experience! I am most excited about our future involvement with æternity and, of course, how successful the project will be.

Dimitar Velev

Dimitar is a junior in Software Engineering, and has been primarily involved in object-oriented programming, but believes that functional languages are quite exciting.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
I hated the programming classes during my first few years at High School.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
The abstraction above it — every project is different to the next one, they share the same basic functionality but the features and how everything is done is entirely up to the minds behind it.

Why Elixir?
The Erlang interoperability makes it an obvious choice. The functional paradigm is quite easy to get behind, thinking only about what to do with data and where it should go next. It makes development, in this context, feel natural, and one can do a lot with very few lines of code. Conducting concurrency in Elixir is easy and quick which has been immensely useful. Also, code organization and planning is a no-brainer the majority of the time.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
Going head first in the project made us all learn very fast, blockchain being the next big thing makes working in this area feel like a huge privilege. Being a part of something so innovative and seeing its development in such a short time frame is very exciting.

Georgi Spasov

Georgi has been deeply into programming for approximately three years and has participated in many events, seminars, and contests. Georgi has been part of a few international projects and has won a couple of awards. He is proud to have been recognized as “Best Student of the Year 2017” in his hometown of Varna, Bulgaria.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
Four years ago I was considering a career as a chef!

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
It’s new, challenging, and interesting all at the same time. I have always strived to work on the next big thing, and I believe that currently that is blockchain technology.

Why Elixir?
Coming from an object-oriented background I was a bit skeptical at the beginning, but now I simply love it and I am so excited about this opportunity. The way you code in Elixir, and the potential it holds is something I was unable to see before I got my hands dirty — now I can truly see endless possibilities that it holds.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
I’m gaining plenty of experience working with a functional language and I’m surprised how different it is from an object oriented one. Moreover, working on the aeternity blockchain makes it even better, because it’s both difficult yet interesting, which keeps me pushing forward.

Hristian Hristov

Hristian is currently studying Automation at the Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria. He graduated from the High School of Mathematics at Varna and has already attended many robotics competitions, and is curious about all new technologies. Hristian has been involved in projects employing C/C++, Java, Python, Arduino, Go, HTML, CSS and a little bit JavaScript. When he was introduced to Elixir, he fell in love with it.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
I studied at the Theatre Academy for two months.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
The security of blockchain and the algorithms which are at the foundation of the technology.

Why Elixir?
That it is simple because it’s functional, fast, and concurrent.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
I’m receiving significant experience working on real-world, blockchain-related projects. I am also gaining knowledge in many programming areas such as cryptography, distributed systems, and security. I’m most excited about the future security algorithms that will be implemented in public blockchains.

Ivan Todorov

Ivan first got his hands on a computer when he was ten years old, and has been fascinated by them ever since. After completing a Cisco Certified Network Associate Routing & Switching (Cisco CCNA), computer networks became one of the most interesting things in IT for him. Ivan’s work experience is very colorful — he has worked as a Bartender, a Manager in a frozen foods factory, a Seaman, provided support in an ISP, and even an assistant system administrator in a wood factory to name but a few. Ivan is very happy with his new decision of becoming an Erlang/Elixir back-end developer.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
As a Bulgarian I shake my head for saying ‘yes’ and nod for ‘no’.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
I believe that people should have full control over their digital world, loss of privacy must become a thing of the past — for me blockchain can be the technology that enables that.

Why Elixir?
I started with Erlang a few years ago and became curious about Elixir from the start. I found out that Elixir gives me an explicit way to express myself, and that is exactly what I needed.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
æternity has all the resources to achieve something big, and it is a privilege for me to even be a small part of it. By working for æternity I have an enormous opportunity to improve my Elixir skills by communicating with extremely experienced developers.

Artur Kratt

Artur is a senior student at Varna Free University, Bulgaria.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
I find it very innovative and believe that the technology will dictate the future of money and shape economics. I am constantly looking for ways to improve my work and gain experience in blockchain development.

Why Elixir?
With Elixir you can make fast, reliable, fault-tolerant applications, and its syntax is easy to understand and very intuitive to me.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
For me, it’s important to improve my programming skills, and working with æternity helps this a lot. I am happy to be part of one of the most promising, scalable blockchains.

Daniela Ivanova

Daniela graduated from the University of Economics — Varna, Bulgaria with a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
In my free time I do yoga and enjoy traditional Bulgarian dances. I like reading books and spending quality time surrounded by nature.

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?
The most fascinating thing about blockchain technology for me is the employment opportunity this field creates globally, not only for developers, but also for all people who want to use the technology.

Why Elixir?
I like the language and its power. My experience is mostly with Elixir and every time I use a different one, my love for Elixir grows exponentially.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
I like working with people from all over the world. You can learn a lot from experts, no matter the field they are focused on.

Samir Barguti

Samir is front-end developer with two years experience as a programmer. He is currently studying Computer Science at Varna Free University, Bulgaria.

Tell us a fun fact about you?
I’m passionate about technology and sports — you might say an Apple fanboy by nature!

What fascinates you about blockchain technology?

Mostly the growth rate of companies that have adopted blockchain technology over the last number of years. I also like the idea of bringing more transparency to the world.

Why Elixir?
Performance and scalability that work on top of the Erlang-based Virtual Machine are what attracted me to Elixir in the first place.

What are you most excited about in Elixir and æternity?
I believe in æternity’s vision and the scope of its ambition. I am thrilled to participate in the creation of a product that will be used by millions of people around the world.

Stay vigilant for the greatness coming from these bright young people, the architects of the brave new world, based on scalable, public, open-source, blockchain technology.

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