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THE CLOSING BRACKET
Understanding UCT’s Developer Community in Numbers
Edition 1 2020
Why Society Needs Ethical Developers
Page 37
Student Startup Interviews Page 50
Page 8
Inside: Career Advice from Recent Grads Page 32
UCT’s Annual Student Developer Magazine Sponsored by Electrum Payments
Opening Statement
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In August 2020 we, as the outgoing leads of the University of Cape Town’s three developer societies (Devsoc, WICS, and the DSC), were resolved to improve collaboration across the developer community. What began as a year-end report that would give visibility into the accomplishments of the community in 2020, particularly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, soon evolved into this: a digital magazine. We quickly realized that there was so much to acknowledge, that there were so many stories to share, and that this year-end collaboration could become a platform for both celebrating, and reflecting on, UCT’s shining developer community. Out of this realization, The Closing Bracket was born. Through stories and statistics, this magazine aims to paint a hopeful picture for tech innovation at the University. It begins with a spotlight on each of the societies and their activities in 2020, while also giving the new leads space to detail their plans for 2021. It then acknowledges some of the success stories that have come out of the many hackathons that took place during the pandemic. The focus then shifts to careers, where graduates who have successfully landed exciting tech jobs are put on display, as well as where those
who are already leading successful careers share their journeys and advice. This is followed by the most detailed analysis of the community to date, giving insight into the engagement, interests, and needs of student developers, with recommendations for stakeholders such as the University and employers. Speaking of employers, those who have frequently partnered with our societies are then interviewed about their involvement with the community. Finally, the spotlight is directed at several exciting student tech startups currently operating out of the University, who share their journeys and plans for the future. Included throughout the magazine are stories written by enthusiastic members of the community, centering around computer ethics, work readiness, and the importance of extracurricular involvement, amongst other things. This magazine will be our legacy, and we hope that it kicks off a tradition of collaboration between the three (and potentially more in the future) societies that together comprise this incredible community. Five years from now, it will be a great achievement if one can clearly track the growth and successes of the community, and so we hope that The Closing Bracket becomes an annual ritual
for outgoing leads. We also hope that this magazine serves as a useful guide, to new and existing students, on the offerings of each society. We think it will be particularly useful to new students in 2021, as it is unclear whether UCT traditions such as ‘plaza week’ will happen, and unlikely that large and exciting opening events for each society will take place. None of this would have been possible without the generous sponsorship provided by Electrum Payments, whose advertisements throughout the magazine definitely deserve attention. They are also frequently (and totally independently) mentioned in the graduate profiles, member stories, and community analysis. From this, we hope it will become evident to readers that Electrum is a top employer and internship provider, and deeply supportive of this community. Ultimately, technology has changed our world, and spearheading much of this change are the software engineers and developers found in almost every organisation worldwide. UCT clearly has a vibrant community of student developers, and it is high time that their accomplishments are celebrated, and their needs considered.
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Table of Contents Our Societies 2 Devsoc 4 WICS 6 DSC Hackathon Stories 14 Team Vision: A Future of Safer Taxis 15 SnapMenu: Boosting Restaurant Sales 16 ChelLynn: Womxn Coming Together to Solve COVID-related Problems 17 The Enigmatic Bees of Anarchy: An Entelectual Endeavour 18 Compli: Helping Business Careers 25 Laura Cohen 28 Onalerona Mosimege 30 Jonathan De Kock 32 Grad Profiles Our Community in Numbers 37 Our Community in Numbers Partner Interviews 48 SOLIDitech 49 Amazon Web Services Start-up Interviews 50 Dado 52 Viero 54 Edify Member Stories 8 Why society needs ethical developers 11 Getting Ahead with Google 19 WhatsApp’s Data Policy: Why it’s bad & what you can do about it 20 Time Management Amidst Lockdown 22 Work Readiness 43 HAC1000W 46 Don’t Forget the User! 1 | The Closing Bracket
Our Societies
2020 Spotlight stayed on as its flagship event. In 2020, our vision was to create a sustainable student developer community at the University of Cape Town, one that will be a driving force of technology development in Cape Town, South Africa, and the rest of the world. We committed to achieving this vision by partnering with all stakeholders who would make it a success. We managed to achieve this, as our stakeholders responded positively By Willie Macharia, Outgoing by partnering with us in realizing Devsoc Executive Chairperson our vision. The UCT Developers’ Society, commonly known as UCT Devsoc, is the oldest student developers’ society at the University of Cape Town. It was started 11 years ago, and in fact, in 2020 we celebrated a decade of being in existence. The society started as “BreakTheRules”, a bi-annual event whose founders had a dream of connecting students to software development companies in Cape Town. As time went by, the name was changed to the UCT Developers’ Society, and #BreakTheRules
At the beginning of the year, we had drafted a calendar of events which included tech talks, office visits, tech workshops, and seminars. Due to COVID-19, our calendar of events was disrupted, but thanks to technology we managed to hold our events online. Our stakeholders proved to be resilient and adaptable, and we managed to carry out our events online with a lot of ease. Some of our achievements we had in 2020 were:
• For the first time, our flagship event, #BreakTheRules, was held online. The two events managed to attract more than 250 participants, and more than 60 internships positions were offered. • We introduced informal hangouts – entrepreneurial and alumni. These hangouts are typical coffee chats where our alumni and our members who are entrepreneurs connect with current members to share their experience. • We offered more than 10 tech talks covering topics like cyber security and web APIs. • We partnered with AWS (Amazon Web Services) to offer 60 free hoodies to our active members in third year, honours, and masters. • We streamlined our communication channels by acquiring a UCT-managed email (uctdevsoc@myuct.ac.za) to allow for an easier handover
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process. We also created our LinkedIn Page and a blogging Medium account. Our engagement with our members on Instagram and Facebook grew by 400%. • We partnered with the DSC to run the 2020 ‘Vac Engagement Program’, which occurred during the mid-year holiday where more than 100 members were trained on various tech skills such as RESTful Web APIs, and running web applications on servers. The program culminated in a 96-hour hackathon sponsored
by Yoco. Allan Gray and SOLIDitech sponsored the first two weeks. • We had a highly successful 24-hour hackathon sponsored by Aruba and SOLIDitech, also in partnership with the DSC. Personally, leading UCT Devsoc was my greatest highlight of 2020. I managed to develop the courage to be imperfect. The executive committee and I decided to try new ideas, without fearing the possibility that they might fail. We knew if some did not work out, we would have learnt in the process. Leading
the society during the pandemic, managing the executive team, and conceiving new ways to engage our stakeholders came with responsibility and extra commitment. Despite the year being difficult, we managed to engage with our members, beating our expectations. As we go into 2021, with Chelsea taking over as Chair, I am confident she will propel this society forward. She managed to serve in the last committee, and the society members voted her with full-confidence that she will do more than what we managed to do this year.
2021 Plans By Chelsea van Coller, Devsoc Chairperson for 2021
learn a lot from their peers and by creating an environment where newer developers can speak up and ask questions. We are looking at hosting events that involve listening to various talks but then going into smaller breakout rooms to discuss the event and create a bigger network amongst developers.
• We will continue hosting our most popular bi-annual event #BreakTheRules, along with various other hackathons and tech talks.
• We have found that many people struggle to participate in their first hackathon and lack the skills to compete effectively. Therefore, we are hoping to host a hackathon program that uses the skills and expertise of older students to help upskill younger students. At the end of the program, we will mix newer developers with more experienced developers and host an engaging hackathon, thus allowing for learning and fun competition.
• We believe that students can
• A new venture this year will be
As DevSoc ventures into its eleventh year of operation, it aims to continue helping students connect with companies, while also assuring that they can also make connections with other students.
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engaging with disadvantaged communities. We have teamed up with SHAWCO to teach students and introduce the concepts of programming and inspire the next generation of developers. • We also want to create more incentives for developers to go beyond their studies and develop skills in new and exciting technologies, also focusing on skills that are strongly desired in the working world. Thus we are looking at developing a leaderboard to incentivise participation amongst the community and highlight achievements of developers of various levels of skill. Although the coming year may prove a challenge with various restrictions and uncertainties, we are confident that we will be able to serve the community effectively and continue the DevSoc legacy.
Our Societies
2020 Spotlight
By Zainab Adjiet, Outgoing WICS Chairperson
The Women in Computer Science (WICS) society was started in 2011 by a group of female computer science postgraduate students, but it was only officially recognized to be a society in 2015. The society was founded in response to the low number of female students compared to male students in the Computer Science department, and thus, our main goal as a society is to gather the womxn in the department together to encourage conversation, support, mentorship and ultimately aid in increasing the female population of the department Following the trend from the previous year, our membership has increased dramatically in 2020, being our highest membership numbers to date. We wanted to pivot our society to cater for all womxn interested in technology rather than specifically computer science, and consequently, we saw a surprising increase in our membership of female students in non-STEM fields.
We also had the pleasure of partnering with some amazing tech companies, organisations and societies to provide meaningful talks and workshops to our members, despite being in lockdown. We unfortunately could not host our annual coding workshop at Thandokhulu High School, or any of our more personal events to build a sense of ‘family’, but we still strived to adapt to new ways to accomplish this while being respectful of the conditions we were in. Some highlights of our 2020 include: • Over the lockdown period, we hosted 8 virtual talks covering various topics such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and general advice for starting a career in tech. • A 4-week long bootcamp for our members who were keen to learn the basics of HTML, CSS, and general web development. 80+ participants had
weekly hand-ins to monitor their progress, and a big final website development project which was judged by the executive committee as well as SOLIDitech. The members who submitted the 3 best websites won varying prizes provided by SOLIDitech. • A 24-hour, inter-varsity hackathon for womxn only. The event featured 19 teams in total from UCT, UKZN, UWC, and Stellenbosch competing against each other, and the 3 best teams received prizes provided by our sponsors, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Allan Gray. • The revamp of our online presence which included our LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter accounts as well as our website; we used these channels to connect with our members, celebrate their achievements, and keep them updated about our events throughout the lockdown.
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• A WICS T-shirt design competition where the winning design was printed on T-shirts for our members. Ever since I joined the WICS executive committee in 2019, it felt as
though I had a second family, and especially so in 2020. We persevered through the troubles we faced and supported each other at every step of the way; and the gratitude of our members made it all worthwhile. For the coming
year, I wish all the best for my sisters of the executive team, our WICS Steminist members, and the incoming WICS 2021 executive. I am excited to see how the society grows and blossoms in the future.
2021 Plans By Joelle Behoor, WICS Chairperson for 2021
will also do a beginner’s guide to a hackathon. This will be a talk from previous hackathon participants and other panelists on how to approach a hackathon and the benefits of entering them.
Founded as a platform to enable like minded STEM driven women to have a space to be seen and heard, this remains WICS’s mission. With changing circumstances, we as WICS plan to evolve in the way we interact with our members, while offering similar opportunities. • We will have our annual hackathon; however, this year we
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• We are also partnering with Amazon to have social media takeovers: this will be a platform where our ‘Steminists’ can follow Amazon employees for a certain period during the day, giving insight into the working world. • 2020 taught us that we do not need to be face-to-face with members to allow them to learn from others, so we will continue with hosting various virtual events: panel discussions, talks, and interview series.
• We are also hoping to continue our annual outreach program, where we go to Thandokhulu High School in Khayelitsha and spend a day teaching the pupils a programming language. • One of the main aims of the society is to make a space for STEM females to network and find a support system with each other. This is why we plan on teaming up with GirlCode to provide a mentorship system for members. The new year brings with it a lot of uncertainty, however this will not affect the main mission that WICS has. The challenges faced will only allow us to learn and build better ways to reach and bring positive learning experiences to our members.
Our Societies
2020 Spotlight
By Jonathan Hart, Outgoing DSC Lead
Started by Google Developers, the Developer Student Clubs program aims to empower students worldwide to become better developers, particularly in web & mobile technologies. Each club is given full autonomy but is provided with plenty of helpful learning resources by Google. The first of its kind in South Africa, the UCT club was launched at the end of 2018, so we are very much the new kid on the block. Despite that, in 2020 we grew tremendously, and saw the most attendance of any developer society. We set ourselves apart from Devsoc and WICS in that we try to have regular (weekly or bi-weekly) events, rather than a few flagship events each year. Seeing as though Devsoc already has great career-accelerating events such
as #BreakTheRules, and WICS has events and competitions aimed primarily at female developers, we round out the UCT developer societies’ offering by hosting many smaller-scale tech talks and workshops, on a range of relevant topics. We also allow anyone (not exclusively UCT students) to attend our events, made easier by the transition to virtual during the pandemic, and as such have seen attendance from non-UCT students, high school students, working professionals, and even members of the international community – we have had attendees from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and India, to name a few. Some highlights from 2020 include: • Throughout lockdown we hosted 14 virtual events and two hackathons, with a cumulative attendance of 900+ people. These events included workshops on Design Thinking, Machine Learning, Blockchain, professional development with Git & GitHub, and building a great LinkedIn profile. • 8 Tech Mentors were assigned to teams of student developers to try and solve problems at the University, which included a productivity app, a degree planner, and a data-efficient e-learning platform. We were featured in the UCT News for
these efforts. • The establishment of LinkedIn and Instagram accounts, which to date have 600+ followers. • A ‘Vac Engagement’ program during the mid-year holiday, in partnership with Devsoc. This tried to mimic the internship experience at a time when few employers were hiring, and we partnered with Allan Gray and SOLIDitech to host workshops and coding competitions. The program culminated in a 96-hour hackathon sponsored by Yoco. • A highly successful 24-hour hackathon sponsored by Aruba and SOLIDitech, also in partnership with Devsoc. Personally, my tenure as the 2019/2020 DSC Lead is something I will never forget. As part of the committee in its inaugural year (2018/2019), I came into my position knowing exactly what we could improve upon: this included more social media engagement, building a team of tech mentors to provide support on our WhatsApp group and help organise events, and having more regular events as well as hackathons. I think for the most part we succeeded in these endeavours, and I look forward to seeing what my successor, Martin, does in 2021.
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2021 Plans
form, Android Development with Kotlin & Flutter, Backend Development with Firebase, etc.). By Nkosinathi ‘Martin’ Ntuli, DSC Lead for 2021
In 2021 we will continue to ensure that students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment, while building solutions for local businesses and their community. This will be achieved through: • Workshops with a focus on Google technologies (such as the Google Cloud Plat-
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• Hackathons (including partnering with other South African DSCs, and international ones such as King’s College in London) and competitive programming events (including Google’s Hash Code). • Unique collaborations with other DSCs & other developer societies (including WICS and Devsoc). • Encouraging and supporting teams’ participation in Google’s Global Solution Challenge
2021. This challenge is centred around solving a problem for at least one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). • Placing student developers in high-impact projects through a partnership with the Research Contracts & Innovation (RCI) Department at UCT. Our goal is to impact students and empower them through technology. We aim to provide students with the resources, opportunities, and experience necessary to be industry-ready, all while still pursuing their degrees.
Why society needs ethical developers by George Rautenbach Source: Aleksa Tamburkovski
It’s a well-known joke that whenever you ask a businessman what the ethics of his business is, he’ll respond with “I’ll consider the ethics when it makes me money.” This reaction is all too common, and highlights a fundamental problem with how we approach business. The tech industry in particular suffers greatly from this outlook, but the reasons for that are not always obvious. The standard developer’s paradigm
It was last year’s Summer #BreakTheRules event. Being interested in computer ethics and the like, I approached an Oracle Corp. developer that was standing half-hidden amidst the general internship-seeking chaos. We started off chatting quite superficially, but when the topic of Oracle’s customers reared its head, I found out that the US military is a big source of their business. Now of course he couldn’t break his NDA, so I could only imagine the use cases for the US military to be procuring thousands of high-end servers managed by a leader in
cloud tech. I asked the guy what he would do if he found out they were running drone piloting software, or air-to-ground missile guidance systems on Oracle’s servers. I’ll never forget his response. He merely shrugged and said, “If it isn’t us, it’ll be someone else”. The US military’s so-called “chair force” is responsible for hundreds of deaths each year by remote control drone strikes. In the last 15 years, the confirmed number is well over 8-thousand lives, including collateral damage in excess of a thousand innocent people. Of this, around a quarter were children. At these atrocities, society cannot merely just shrug. It was at this point in the conversation where I realised many developers don’t have the faintest sense for the ethics of computing. When the Oracle dev said that if it weren’t them it would be someone else, he was speaking the absolute truth. If Oracle suddenly grew a conscience, the US Department of Defence would simply walk over to Amazon Web Services, who might
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Member Stories
happily collect their hush-money to host their drone strike software under the table. It’s because many developers concern themselves only with how, and not why, that immoral monoliths like this get built. Drone strikes are horribly inhumane, but they’re also the mere tip of the iceberg of unethical computing. Depths of the iceberg
Tristan Harris is one of my personal heroes. He used to be a designer for Google before he departed from them over ethical concerns. Today he runs the Centre for Humane Technology, whose mission is to reverse the humanitarian failings of technology and to realign the purpose of technology to upgrade humanity, instead of downgrading it. Many don’t know exactly how crucial their work is, which is why they co-produced a documentary with Netflix detailing some of the biggest computer ethics issues of our time. The Social Dilemma explores the perils of social media in our hyper-information age. Where every newspaper, blogger, and ad agency in the world are all fighting for your attention to deliver you their content. In a space like this, social media (where people spend a great deal of their free time) has the immense responsibility of choosing how to deliver this content. Unfortunately, so far most social media platforms solve this problem by selling to the highest bidder. And so to satiate their desire for profit, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter (and many more) have their developers spend nearly all their time creating a product that maximises time spent in-app. They implement all kinds of psychological design tricks to keep users engaged. For instance, when you get notified that you’ve been tagged in a photo – that isn’t for your epistemic pleasure, it’s to get you in-app ASAP. You would have seen that photo anyway while on the app later, but that’s
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“They implement all kinds of psychological
design tricks to keep users engaged. For instance, when you get notified that you’ve been tagged in a photo – that isn’t for your epistemic pleasure, it’s to get you in-app ASAP.”
not good enough for them. To really maximise profits, devs create these platforms so that you are roped in every opportunity they get. And it’s not coincidental that it works – it’s specifically designed to hit the dopamine targets in your brain, resulting in a dependence on the platform. This is what Edward Tufte meant when he said there are only two industries that refer to their customers as “users”: the tech industry, and the illegal drugs trade. Social media can be just as addictive as heroin, and just as harmful too. The deliberate self-harm rates in young American girls had been statistically stable at about 100 to 400 incidents per 100 000 per year, until about 2009. After that point the rates skyrocket by ~60% for late teen girls and ~200% for pre-teen girls. That’s about triple what it used to be. And what was introduced into girls’ lives circa 2009? Mobile social media. Gen Z is getting hit particularly badly. Studies show that these kids spend a remarkable portion of their free time after school on social media. This constant exposure to unrealistic standards has been linked to serious emotional damage and a deterioration of self-image. A whole generation is growing up with more anxieties, higher depression rates, and less confidence. For these kids (many of whom are in high school or later) the rates of passing driver’s license tests have plummeted, and so too the frequency of dates and other romantic interactions. But the iceberg goes even deeper: because social media platforms are so profit-centric,
Member Stories
organisations with a lot of money can use it for public manipulation. Essentially for the right price, you can basically guarantee that a population will see your ads and your content above anyone else’s – thereby influencing their perceptions and behaviours. This is how elections can be rigged and countries destabilised. For instance, the winning party of the 2018 Brazilian election has been criticised for abusing WhatsApp to spread loads of misinformation in their favour. This includes doctored photos of opposing party members, manipulated audio-clips misrepresenting opposition policies, and fabricated “fact-checks” used to discredit legitimate news. But of course, their price was right, and so WhatsApp let it happen.
incentivises companies to create a dependence on their service so that they can collect more data on their users, which they can then exploit for profit. It’s a vicious cycle that ends up harming humanity a lot more than any kind of good it may harbour.
Take a step back
The real solution here is cultivating developers with moral consciences. Imagine if the people that work day-and-night to maximise user engagement all just took a quick breath and asked themselves, “shouldn’t I be making this service less addictive?” If they thought critically about their work I bet they’d stop right away. Or at least find a different, more humane, solution.
This is the world we live in. Where a billionaire can cause riots wherever and whenever he wants with a tap of a button. Where a democratic election can get rigged by a group of black hats that have never stepped foot in that country. Where a whole generation of people are set up for personal failure. Where every single person with an online presence is manipulated and exploited on a daily basis. And all this caused by one industry. This is why the Centre for Humane Technology’s mission matters a lot. And Tristan Harris isn’t alone in this. Tim Kendall (former president of Pinterest), Sean Parker (former president of Facebook), Jeff Seibert (former Twitter executive), Sandy Parakilas (former Facebook operations manager), Jaron Lanier (inventor of VR), Aza Raskin (inventor of infinite scrolling), and Justin Rosenstein (inventor of the Like button), are but a few prominent figures in the tech industry that have publicly renounced the value of social media. These people are the closest thing Big Tech has to a conscience – many of them direct contributors to the state of social media today, who having realised the error of their ways and are now fighting against inhumane technology. The cause of this horrendous present state of social media has a name: surveillance capitalism. The notion that surveilling customers can bring even more profit than selling them services
There have been some governmental efforts to alleviate the damages of surveillance capitalism. Regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act attempt to encourage user awareness about personal data they sacrifice to companies through using their services. Although, reading a cookie disclaimer on a website hardly ever deters anyone from using it.
So this is my earnest appeal to you: the programmers, business analysts, developers, project managers, and tech executives of the future. Think about the consequences of your work. Think not only how it will affect your company’s profit margin, but how it will affect your customers, and society at large. Consider whether your work is really a force for good in the world. Because remember a good computer scientist asks not only whether they can implement a project, but also whether they should.
About the Writer In 2020, George graduated with a BSc majoring in Computer Science and Philosophy. He’s deeply interested in the intersection between these fields and plans to continue research into computer ethics at an honours level this year. His hobbies include writing Rube Goldberg-style scripts for solving menial problems and participating in privacy activism against Big Tech.
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Getting Ahead with Google by Suvana Rohanlal It is fair to say that 2020 was a tough year. One filled with sorrow for those we lost, heartache for experiences missed, and hardships that tested the very nature of our resilience. However, when I look back on the year, I recall the following words, and the immense joy that I felt upon reading them: “Google invites you to participate in our exclusive virtual development program called Get Ahead.” In a year full of unusual circumstances, I was presented with an amazing opportunity by Google’s university. On 9th June, I received an email invitation to participate in an eight-week virtual workshop called Get Ahead. It’s an invite-only program for womxn-identifying students who are interested in developing their skill set for future employment opportunities at Google. My journey began with registering for the main workshops and joining a Slack channel that was created for all the participants. At the workshop, a summary of future events was provided which outlined the resources and content to expect over the eight-week period. The program was structured such that we would receive a video to watch and an assignment to complete every week for six weeks. Completing the assignment would result in an entry into a raffle to win a 1-on-1 mock interview with a Google engineer. The video for Week One contained the opening remarks and instructions on how to register for the required platform (Mimir Classroom) to do the assignments. Mimir Classroom provides tools for instructors to efficiently teach computer science courses (of any scale and complexity) without compromising the quality of education for students. In Week Two’s video, there was an insightful discussion on code health and helpful tips and tricks for writing understandable code. Some of the tips that I found most helpful were as follows: write code for the reader by choosing names that reveal intent; keep code blocks focused and embrace simplicity with comments that complement the code; and lastly, perform a code review with a colleague or friend.
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The assignments were thought-provoking and required good problem-solving skills to tackle them. One assignment, based on Iterators, allowed me to experience the complexity involved at a high-end company and how different university is from the working world. The program allowed me to get an insight into the culture at Google and the daily life of a Software Engineer. There were many video lessons based on topics such as: research in computer science; imposter syndrome; how to handle interviews; and resume tips. These gave me great experience in what is expected in an interview and the working world. At the end of the eight weeks, I had the opportunity to take Google’s Online Challenge that is used to shortlist candidates in an interview session. The challenge was used to assess the extent of the success of the workshop. Overall, it was an amazing learning experience full of lessons that are not emphasised in a university syllabus. The program also allowed me to expand my network of highly motivated and capable womxn from around the world.
About the Writer Suvana completed her 3rd year studying a BSc in Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2020. She enjoys learning about tech and watching football with plans to gain experience in the world of work as well as ticking off items on her Cape Town bucket list.
Hackathon Stories
Team Vision: A Future of Safer Taxis by Justin Dorman, Zach Bresler, & Chad Piha
Upon hearing about the Discovery GradHack 2020 opportunity through a lecturer, Team Vision instantly knew it was our calling. The first step was to submit a conceptual idea on how we could solve an everyday problem in South Africa, using technology as a driver. We were ecstatic when our idea got accepted, and we, along with 11 other teams across all South African universities, were invited to compete in Discovery’s virtual hackathon. The event proved to be an intensive weekend of immersive work experience, solving real life challenges through technology used in Discovery’s environment. Discovery put together an incredible virtual event, hosted on their seamless GradHack platform. The hackathon was a highly engaging experience and provided us with a fantastic opportunity to network, engage and ideate with the innovative and brilliant IT lead-
ership teams across all business units in the Discovery ecosystem. Along with late nights of coding, of course. With Team Vision coming from an academic background in Business Science integrated with Computer Science, we believe that this hackathon was right up our alley, as it focused on both innovation and product development. To begin the process, we started with the why, and recognised a particular issue surrounding safety concerns with taxis in South Africa, where reckless drivers present a risk to passengers and other road users. Taxis provide an essential service for both society and the economy, as it transports roughly two thirds of South African households - however, despite the enormity of the industry, it is very understudied. Thus, it presents fruitful opportunities for innovation and growth.
After establishing our why, we came up with a solution to alleviate the safety issue associated with taxis in South Africa. Over the weekend, we developed a seamless mobile web application that allows users to log their experience, report taxis and provide ratings for each taxi. In addition, we incorporated AWS’s Rekognition software to detect number plates from an image. To promote better driving and ultimately result in safer roads, we aligned our idea with Discovery’s ethos of rewarding positive behavioural change by ideating around various incentives for highly rated taxis. Doing so strengthened our value proposition by a significant amount. Over the two-day event, we developed the software using React, Redux, and Firebase for rapid implementation. Our approach was to create something simple and minimalistic, but one which can have a significant impact. This experience prvoided valuable insight into high pressure development. It really pushed our limits and tested our ability to work cohesively with optimal productivity. The experience as a whole was highly rewarding, with many lessons learned and connections made. We were thrilled when we placed first in the hackathon. Each team member from Vision won a PlayStation 5, and received an offer of employment from Discovery. We encourage everyone reading this to take on new opportunities wherever possible, as these experiences present invaluable learnings and open new doors to further opportunities. A positive growth mindset and a continuous learning approach = the path to success.
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SnapMenu: Boosting Restaurant Sales by Shai Unterslak, Gabriel Stein, & Max Tyrell
A few months ago, SnapMenu was just an idea; then the joint hackathon between the Developer Student Club and Devsoc (sponsored by Yoco) forced us to convert it into a product - within 120 hours! The open-ended challenge was: Design something to help small businesses. We created a mobile menu that boosts restaurant sales, and since then we’ve been accepted to join the French South African Tech Labs incubation program, and are having conversations with some of the biggest payment providers and restaurant franchises in the country. We came across the idea when we saw restaurants were already adopting some form of digital menus, in the form of QR-scannable PDFs. This was mainly due to the COVID-19 concerns around touching physical menus. Our backgrounds are all in user experience and e-commerce, so naturally we thought about the opportunities that exist once you have a customer on a web page on their phone. We decided to offer restaurants a free mobile menu that simply and beautifully displayed
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menu items to customers.
COVID-19 product, but that we could actually optimise menus in a On the tech side, we used Ruby on way that increases revenue signifRails to build a Content Manage- icantly. By using profitability data ment System that restaurateurs and menu engineering techniques, can use to create, update, and we’re building a conversion optihide menu items as well as activate mised menu that will boost restausales. Within the 120-hour hacka- rant sales. This value proposition is thon period we even managed to the single most important discovget a local bagel er y in Snapre s t a u ra n t t o Menu’s history, “Our current mandate is agree to test our and is the reason product. we have continto increase the number of Point of Sale (POS) systems ued building the Ultimately, we company. Our we can integrate with” won the hackacurrent mandate thon, and besides is to increase the cash, the prize included a the number of Point of Sale (POS) one-on-one mentoring session systems we can integrate with, with Lungisa Matshoba, the CTO and continue collecting data on of Yoco. We’ve continued to keep our product’s ability to increase in touch with him since and have restaurant revenue by over 20%. built a good relationship with the other founders. Yoco and Snap- Overall, hackathons are a great Menu are aligned in that we both way to meet smart people and want businesses (especially small build cool things. Focusing on the ones) to thrive, and we want to business case and product posiprovide access to revenue gener- tioning is highly underrated in tech ating technology that was previ- hackathons, and I highly encourously inaccessible. age anyone who enters a hackathon to think not just about the Winning the hackathon moti- tech that they’re building, but also vated us to continue exploring the the problem they’re solving. space, and we soon realised that we didn’t only have a nice-to-have
ChelLynn: Womxn Coming Together to Solve COVID-related Problems by Chelsea van Coller, & Lynn Weyn
Going into the Virtual Inter-Varsity Hackathon for Womxn, we were open-minded and bubbling with excitement - for the two of us, third year CS students, it was our first hackathon. When tasked with solving a problem that arose due to COVID-19, we armed ourselves with optimism and took to the whiteboard for a long brainstorming session. After assessing our ideas, we came to the conclusion that we were trying to solve too many problems at once. We narrowed down our thought process and focused on a topic we could relate to - education. We looked at how the pandemic has affected learners and whether there was a technological solution to this problem. There are already quite a few productivity apps on the market that assist learning in school, but we could not find any app that exists as a replacement to Physical Education (PE) - sports in school.
step counts, and show how far everyone is in achieving their class goal. There would be a leaderboard system in place to motivate classes to compete against each other to place in the top three classes within the school. Using Android Studio, we made the interface that would be used in the app, and got the pedometer working. We learnt how to work better with Android Studio, making UIs (User Intefaces) and using mobile hardware. Hearing the legendary stories of pizza and all-nighters at non-online hackathons, we were not
Hackathon Stories disappointed when we got Uber Eats vouchers and did 12am elevator pitches. It was very motivating to see the plans and progress of other teams, and motivated us to work even harder to have something fantabulous to present in the morning. We snuck in a couple hours of sleep to balance out the cups of coffee and powered on to the deadline. Watching all the presentations was incredible. It was wonderful to see what like-minded powerful womxn could solve in such a short space of time. After completing our presentation, we could finally take a breath of fresh air and relax. Honestly, winning the Hackathon was far from our expectations, and we were overcome with excitement and gratitude. The hackathon was an incredible learning experience and extremely encouraging. WICS did an absolutely phenomenal job in organizing the event and we are grateful to everyone who made an impact in it. We would encourage anyone who has not participated in a hackathon to put on your thinking caps and give it go!
And then like a bolt of lightning (or a shot of caffeine), the solution came to us: an android app where students from a class can join the same team, and together try to reach a step goal (e.g 10 students try to reach a total of 100 000 steps). A school would get all students to join their respective classes within the app, which will track personal step counts, class
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The Enigmatic Bees of Anarchy: An Entelectual Endeavour by Emile ‘Enigmatic’ Tredoux, Bronson ‘Bees’ Rudner, & Andrew ‘Anarchy’ McGregor
could simplify and speed up our solution by ignoring these and rather focusing on the relevant pieces. For the winning solution, we implemented a greedy solution (much like last year) from scratch, with pieces prioritised in an optimal order we had discovered. As usual, we verified that when it comes to optimisation problems, greed is good!
The Entelect University Cup is an annual programming contest for teams of undergraduate students across South Africa. In 2019, we decided to form a team together, based on our history of working together in mathematics and informatics olympiad programmes - and last year we claimed victory! So, when Entelect announced that the University Cup would be held again this year and that honours students were eligible to compete, we thought it only natural that we return to defend our title. This year posed an extra complication over last year’s challenge, with all of us having to participate remotely and being unable to converse in person. To address these issues, we set up a repository on GitHub together with some scripts (hooray for Make-
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file’s) to easily sync our work, while coordinating on a private Discord server. The task we were given was to tile a board using a number of rectilinear pieces. Essentially fancy tetris, except the maps were mahoosive, and the pieces were non-standard, so we needed to put in some thought to come up with an efficient program for tiling. Our strategy going into the challenge was first to analyse the data by creating visual representations of each data set using the matplotlib library for Python. Using this data we could devise better strategies for each individual test case, rather than create one singular strategy for all the cases. From the analysis, we found that many of the tiles were redundant, so we
In order to add to the suspense, the live scoreboard is frozen during the final hour of the competition so that teams are unable to see the improvements in everyone else’s scores. However, when the scoreboard froze, we were several million (yes, million) points away from the top spot on the leaderboard. This had us rather worried because we weren’t sure how many more points we could obtain using our strategy, and there were a couple of times where we thought that we might not come away with a win. The competition showed us that good time management is imperative. If we had dawdled or delayed even half an hour, we would have lost out on submitting our last solution, which would have cost us our victory. We would definitely encourage anyone interested in programming to attend this event. All in all, it was great fun, and winning three gaming laptops wasn’t bad either!
Hackathon Stories
Compli: Helping Business by Kialan Pillay, Insaaf Dhansay & Johns Paul
When the UCT Developer Society and Google Developer Student Club announced that they’d be hosting a twenty-four-hour hackathon, after no more than five minutes of deliberation, Team Alpha Q decided to throw our hat into the ring and give the challenge our best effort. Having competed in the previous competition where teams were given 96 hours to design and develop a solution, we wanted to up the ante on this occasion and assess how we fared under the intense time pressure and crunch that characterised this particular edition. The theme: Business and COVID19 Health Management. Participating teams were tasked to craft a solution to address recurring problems centred around health management and compliance in the context of the pandemic and the ongoing increased requirement for effective processes. Our team’s solution to this perennially-faced and impactful problem was to design an employee health screening and management dashboard web application. Employees can visit the app to conduct their daily screen-
ing or update the business on their health status if they are in mandatory isolation. This is a major pain point that both our research and sponsors identified, and a problem that is readily solved by the consistent capture of data and increased visibility of the information to employers and other stakeholders. All of the captured data is immediately persisted and reflects on a real-time dashboard available to business administrators. At a glance, employers can view key metrics regarding the state of the health of their workforce, and make key data-driven decisions to increase efficiency and ultimately keep employees safe. Compli also incorporates machine learning algorithms: the inference is conducted in real-time based on current data to generate predictions about employee risk profiles and office occupancy levels. All of these metrics, combined into an aesthetic yet powerful dashboard, allow businesses to quickly and easily track and manage employee health. We implemented our solution with a ReactJS web application, hosted on the Vercel cloud plat-
form, with Auth0 as our preferred authentication provider. The server is built in Python using the Flask framework and is hosted on a Heroku Dyno, with AWS RDS providing the persistence service for our application. Designing and implementing a complete responsive solution was an incredibly challenging task for our team. We worked with no more than an hour of sleep to deliver the product, and the challenge we consistently faced was delivering high-quality code, avoiding regressions, and getting in all the major functionality whilst racing against the clock. This is a unique experience and one that cannot be replicated in longer hackathons where you have more time to breathe and think. The team had to be steadfast in our belief in our idea, and hack away until we produced a high-quality, visually impressive, and powerful solution. This was an amazing experience, and winning the hackathon was just a bonus - the lessons learnt were invaluable and our gratitude goes out to the organisers for such a well-run event.
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WhatsApp’s Data Policy:
?
Why it’s bad and what you can do about it by Callum Tilbury
Recently, social media has been abuzz with a serious concern: WhatsApp’s new privacy policy. For those who have been paying attention though, this progression was natural: after buying WhatsApp for a gigantic $19B in 2014, Facebook has long been intending to make a return on their investment. Slowly but surely, the company has been rolling out changes to the WhatsApp environment, setting the stage for increased revenues. So, what does the latest policy entail, and what should you do about it? The new policy primarily centres around the “WhatsApp Business” functionality, which was introduced in 2018. While there are certainly other parts of WhatsApp’s terms that are worrying, the details surrounding business interactions on the platform are the most concerning at present. Predictably, the policy update was written in a complex way, filled with legal jargon and drawn-out sentences—which makes it challenging to understand. The gist of it is fairly clear though: Facebook aims to use its business features on WhatsApp to “personalize the ads you see on Facebook and Instagram.” Data will be shared more freely between the applications, and they will seemingly become increasingly integrated. Users are assured that their messages remain end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) for private chats, but there are caveats when communicating with a business. For example, a note was recently added to WhatsApp’s latest ‘Security Whitepaper’: “In 2021, organizations who use the Business API will be able to designate WhatsApp’s parent company, Facebook, as the vendor that operates the Business API endpoint on their behalf . Since such messages are not delivered directly to an endpoint controlled by the organization, WhatsApp does not consider chats with organizations who choose to use Facebook to operate their API endpoint to be end-to-end encrypted.” Seeing through the smokescreen here and elsewhere
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Source: MessengerPeople (Edited)
is difficult—due to obfuscated language—but Facebook’s intentions are clear: more tracking, more data, more advertisements, and ultimately, less privacy. What, then, should we do? Fortunately, a host of alternative messaging applications exist—we need not feel stuck with WhatsApp. My recommendation is Signal. It uses completely open-source software, meaning that all of its code can be found online, and it is regularly audited by security experts. The application is developed by a non-profit company in the United States, which thus has no profit incentives, relying on donations. All content is E2EE in Signal, including all the metadata generated while using the application. Telegram has been garnering attention too, but I would try to avoid it. Despite being popular and having some attractive features, many concerns remain surrounding its privacy policies. In fact, moving from WhatsApp to Telegram is somewhat regressive for privacy, as Telegram does not apply E2EE to chats by default. Moreover, its server-side code is not completely open-source, and thus cannot be audited. Painfully, too, Telegram will begin showing adverts later this year in parts of its application. The choice is yours, but choose wisely.
About the Writer Callum is an Electrical & Computer Engineering graduate with a passion for socially-just & sustainable technology. He hopes to view the world with a multidisciplinary lens, by considering both the complex technical dimensions and the tricky social implications of emerging gadgets.
Time Management Amidst Lockdown by Sam Kurgan
Source: 1ZOOM
G
ood day Reader,
The year 2020 has been filled with work, work, trips to the kitchen and…more work. I decided very early on in the year that this pandemic was not going to stop me from doing all that I believed I could. An friend of mine who had recently graduated from a BSc in computer science spoke to me excitingly about his new startup. He had just founded a digital agency in Cape Town and was gathering young and passionate developers. I knew nothing about web development at this point but eagerly accepted his offer.
Here is where I learnt my first lesson: Anything, but particularly coding, can be learnt completely online. I was tasked with completing a 40-hour mammoth of a Udemy course on the React.js framework. It took me the entirety of the original 3-week lockdown in March to complete. I set up a schedule and spaced it out so that I would finish within the 21 days. Many days I was almost bored to death however the prize at the end (a real developer job!) kept me motivated. Now, I had to tackle my first tasks at the agency. THEY KILLED ME. I felt completely lost
and utterly useless. I was helped a bit by the other developers but basically the consensus was that everything can be found online and it’s simply something you have to figure out yourself. This ‘tough-love’ proved to work in my favour. I soon got very good at scrolling Stack Overflow to find the answer to any queries I may have had. Lesson Number 2 is to never give up. I understand how ridiculously generic that sounds but hear me out: when developing, or learning anything really, there are undoubtedly going to be stumbling blocks that at the time feel like impossibly high walls. I have
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Member Stories
seen error messages that have made me want to punch a hole through my monitor and then jump into a thorn bush. Looking back on these issues, of course they feel stupid, but these memories are some of the most important. Now, every time I feel completely hopeless and overwhelmed, I think back to these times and remind myself that I eventually overcame those issues. Failure is only failure if you learn nothing from the experience; there is something to take away from everything. Besides my developer job, which started off as purely web/web-app development and morphed into using React Native to work on iOS/android applications, I also tutored and maintained a first average at university. For this final section of my piece I’d like to speak a little on the topics of time-management and ‘motivation’. I found it extremely useful to block out my days. This doesn’t have to be extremely rigid but general guidelines definitely do help. For example I always aimed to have completed my university work by 5pm, then I would exercise, eat dinner and relax. From 8pm
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onwards I would work on my developer job. This did lead to many frustrating and late nights, however I found it worked for me. If you are someone who isn’t a night owl then maybe waking up earlier and going to bed earlier is the correct move. Whatever you dom make sure it works for you, and don’t be too hard on yourself when you slip up. I heard a quote that very much resonated with me and it goes: “motivation is not what you put in, but what you get out” This basically means that we cannot just wait for a spark of motivation to come around before we get down to work. You have to work unmotivated sometimes, the motivation will come, I promise. When you get better at your craft and start to enjoy the process, not only will you know you have found your passion, but the motivation will also come easier as you associate whatever it is you are doing with a positive outcome. 2021 so far looks very exciting for me. I have recently founded, with a co-partner, my very own digital agency. I have hired a freelance graphic designer and us three students plan on getting to work. The thought of manag-
ing my own company and building it from the ground up excited me immensely. I feel I still have so much to learn, and I am so excited to get started. If you resonated with or were inspired by what you just read, please contact me to talk about any questions/concerns you have regarding being a developer in any context - I would love to hear what you have to say! Best of luck future titans of industry!
About the Writer Sam begins his second year in 2021, completing a BSc with majors in Computer S c i e n ce a n d A p p l i e d Statistics. Sam’s email: skurgan789@gmail.com WhatsApp: 074 426 3352
by Bradley Malgas
Work Readiness Investec’s Work Readiness experience is easily one of the most influential and informative programs I have been a part of in my academic career. In a mere five days I learnt so much that I still use today, and it’s essential that I share the experience with any and all who could benefit from it. In 2019, my bursar (I was funded by the Investec IT Scholarship) sent me an email about a program for “preparing and enhancing the skills
you need to survive in the working world”. This was an understatement. After the experience I felt more confident about my course work, and more confident and less anxious about my future. This program achieved far more than it set out to. I was sure that my application would not be successful. A computer science student attending an event that is usually intended for those in commerce fields? It seemed improbable that I would be chosen
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Member Stories
over someone studying towards banking or finance. Nevertheless, I was selected to participate, and Investec flew me to Sandton, Johannesburg, for a five-day stay in a five-star hotel - high-five to them for keeping my excitement levels so high! Prior to the first day of activities, we were introduced to our roommates and other participants, and had a games night, so already I was feeling more comfortable with my placement in the program, and I realized the experience was not only about work readiness, but making meaningful connections. The first day of the program saw us waking up at 6am, something I was not used to, and before I even had a chance to eat breakfast I noticed everyone reading newspapers: we had to find an interesting article and prepare our thoughts on it - we were already being tested and kept on our feet! I skimmed through and identified a tech article, which proved more difficult to understand than I thought, but soon I got the gist of it and we went through to the Investec offices, gifted with name tags and iPads on arrival. The day’s agenda included several talks on topics such as ‘overcoming struggle’, ‘your financial journey’, and ‘stress management and mindfulness’. I did not expect them to be engaging and useful - yet I left the auditorium with pages of notes and thoughts on how to apply each lesson. I was already impressed by the program and learning a lot. On day two, besides more rich, encouraging talks, we were split into teams and given time to get to know one another before being given a problem to solve. My team and I spent the day brainstorming, even into the evening at the hotel, and throughout this I found myself becoming more confident, cracking jokes at every opportunity and making friends with people who, that morning, had been strangers. Amidst these diverse and interesting personalities, I discovered
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another computer science student (which shocked me) and we instantly got along sharing venture ideas and discussing our projects and the languages we preferred. On the third day we continued to work on our solution, which we would present on the final day of the program, but dinner that evening had a twist: we ate at the Investec offices instead of the hotel, and had a surprise speaker who taught us how to eat a threecourse meal. She explained which utensils to use for each meal, proper dinner etuiqite such as how to fold a napkin, and even how to properly eat foreign food - such as sushi with chopsticks! These were skills I never knew I needed to learn, and clearly Investec was preparing us for different situations we could find ourselves in, in an increasingly globalized, corporate world. On the bus the next day I realized, when speaking to a girl who was not part of my team, that I had been reserved and cut-off from the rest of the participants; but as luck would have it, that evening we were given a chance to network ‘professionally’. During the day we designed our own business cards and had them printed, and were given talks on how to network effectively. Moreover, we were informed that various Investec employees would be attending, so the evening would be a chance to create long-lasting professional connections. Making small talk with such successful people made me rightfully nervous, leading to a rough start at the networking evening - conversations never got past me sharing what I was studying and the duration of my studies! However, I became more social as the evening progressed, ending off with over 15 business cards shared; which then led to LinkedIn connections, and as promised, these connections have endured since. The last day of the program was undoubtedly the most exciting: it was time for each team to present their idea. I sat and listened to some of the amazing ideas that
Member Stories
were presented, and eventually, it was our turn to present. We had already rehearsed how each person would step in when it was their turn to speak, and how we would keep a flow between the different topics and give each person a different aspect and focus. We finished up and while the judges deliberated, a few people approached our team afterwards and said they really loved our idea (top secret). I was very flattered. It is worth mentioning that in the evenings, besides working with my team, I had been doing a winter term course, so I often felt my team was handicapped by me not being able to contribute as much as I would’ve hoped for. Despite this, the brainstorming paid off, as when winners were announced we actually came first place! I left the program feeling like a whole
new person. I had made some awesome memories, made some amazing friends, and gained invaluable skills and information. Despite being a computer science student, the program absolutely developed essential skills that would be useful no matter what work environment one ends up in. Even if you think a program is targeting other applicants, if it looks like you can learn a lot from it, you have every right to apply to it and thrive like I did. For this reason, I urge and encourage anyone and everyone to apply for the Investec Work Readiness Program in 2021.
About the Writer
Bradley is a Computer Science Honours Graduate who just started working at Investec. You can see more about the journey to land his job in his Grad Profile on page 34.
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Q
Q&A
Careers
Career Path Interviews
Laura Cohen Laura Cohen is a software development engineer at Amazon Web Services. She completed her honours in Computer Science at UCT and was the WICS ViceChairperson. When did you decide that you wanted to become a developer?
During my computer science degree I was exposed to various technical subjects, which have been relevant in my current position. In retrospect, my first true developer experience came from my participation in hackathons.
I had a bit of a rollercoaster journey deciding on what I wanted to do before I actually ended up as a developer. I originally majored in marine biology with the hopes of someday working with large marine mammals, Hackathons were a great starter-simulation to expebut quickly discovered how much I hated labs and lab rience what it’s like to work with a team to deliver an reports. end-to-end project. Hackathons helped me to learn and appreciate how to work with a group of people This led me to quickly switching majors to computer with varying degrees of experience. science. At first, I didn’t really know what I wanted out of CS but I knew I enjoyed the topic. I went through a Here I also learned an important lesson in development bit of time where I was actually quite averse to the idea that has stuck with me all this time: University projects of becoming a developer. I didn’t want to just be ‘writ- force you to create a solution from scratch, whereas ing code’ all day, and I was actively looking into what development is more about using tried and trusted other choices I had with my CS degree. processes. The journey to creating a new product from nothing is about putting together pre-existing pieces Around the beginning of third year, though, I had a (where possible), then implementing the rest on your mental change where I started to appreciate coding own. It is way more efficient to use highly tested librarand the developer role, much more than ever before. ies and frameworks instead of reinventing the wheel, This is the point where I really decided that I wanted to where in university there is much more emphasis on become a developer, and it was truly the best decision creating each and every algorithm on your own. I ever made. Hackathons were a great place to get the experience What was your first experience with develop- of throwing together various pre-existing technoloment? gies in order to end up with a final product.
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Careers
Tell us about your career journey so far? Where would you like to be a few years from now? My career journey so far has been short but incredibly exciting, I started working at AWS as a software development engineer a little over seven months ago. I currently work on a team that deals with Amazon Machine Images, which are crucial for the running and functioning of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Looking at the future, I definitely see myself staying with AWS for some time. A shortterm goal is to continue learning and absorbing everything I possibly can from all of the talented people around me, and hopefully achieving a promotion to the next engineering level. Long term, I see myself continuing to learn the technical and business aspects of big tech, and someday pursuing my own start-up venture. What have been challenges along the way and how did you respond to them? I’ve dealt with a few challenges along the way, but I’ll start with the challenges presented from the current pandemic. I was originally meant to work for AWS in their Cape Town office, so I spent some time back home in the United States beforehand, which perfectly coincided with the emergence of Covid. I was left in a strange position where I could no longer travel back to South Africa, and I would have to wait until the pandemic subsided to be able to move back to Cape Town and start. I, instead, reached out to my recruiters and one thing led to another and I was able to get a position in the AWS office in Herndon, Virginia. It was definitely a huge challenge to very abruptly drop my life in Cape Town and start rebuilding here in the US. A huge takeaway from this is the importance of putting yourself out there and being proactive about your career. I am incredibly fortunate to have pushed my case and to have jumped at any opportunity that was presented to me. Another challenge I’ve faced was starting my
position remotely. I have never done remote work before, let alone professional development work. I had many fears of starting remotely, but again I followed my own advice and jumped at the opportunity. Lastly, the main challenge I dealt with, and still deal with, is good ol’ imposter syndrome. The beginning of my time at AWS consisted of me sitting in meetings and hearing all of the highly experienced people around me speak, what sounded like, a foreign language. It is truly a daunting feeling that I still deal with today, but I’ve come across a few methods that have helped me to keep it at bay. When I’m feeling very insecure of my abilities, I take time to reflect back on the work I did in my first few months. It’s always amusing to look at my very first code reviews and see the simple few lines of code that caused me so much stress. I compare it to the work I am doing now and it seems like comparing a five year olds handwriting to some Shakespearean cursive. This really helps ground me and see actual proof that I am improving, learning, and contributing every day. What has been the most difficult career choice you’ve had to make? I would say the hardest choice I’ve had to make so far was my choice to either continue pushing back my work start date until I could be in Cape Town in person (due to the pandemic), or push to start remotely in the US. This was a very difficult decision due to my insecurity with starting my first job remotely, and the sadness that came with leaving my Cape Town life behind for the time being. In the end, it really was the best choice I could have made. This is extremely apparent when I stop to think about the awesome things I get to work on everyday, and when I get to see how much I’ve learned and grown in such a short time. What are your other hobbies or passion projects? How do you make time for them while being a full-time developer?
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My main (generic advice) would be to never stop learning, and never become stagnant! There is so much information out there, and technology is such a fast-growing field, and it’s important to keep up and stay informed. Luckily, the internet is filled with infinite resources to help us learn and stay current. Do you feel honours benefited you in achieving your current position in any way and would you recommend completing honours before going into the workspace?
Due to the pandemic, and me moving from the excitement of Cape Town, I had to find new ways to spend my time. I am a very active person who loves to be outside and working out, but obviously things became a bit more difficult with the mass closure of gyms. This past year I’ve really gotten into hiking with my close friends and my dog. Hiking ended up being such a great way to stay fit, be outdoors, and have socially-distanced friend time. I also like to spend some time playing video/computer games when I can as a total detach from reality. I am pretty inconsistent with my gaming these days since I spend so much time already sitting at a desk and staring at my screen. Another activity I spend a good amount of time on is watching YouTube to learn about various topics like investing, personal finance, start-ups, and any other self-improvement I find interesting. Although I do work full-time, I make an active effort to keep a good work-life balance that gives me time to enjoy my outside passions. I keep a rule to not do anything work related on weekends, and so far I’ve been able to keep to this. Having a dog also forces me to get out and walk/hike after work and on weekends, since I really don’t have any other choice and I want my best pal to stay happy and healthy. What is your advice for anyone who wants to become a developer, no matter how far along the journey they are?
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I personally feel that my honours was really valuable, and was a year well-spent. Doing my honours gave me an extra year of experience in coding and introduced me to many new topics that I otherwise would not have learned about. I felt that my honours courses were actually very relevant to my job now, and gave me a good place to start, instead of being a complete beginner. For example, I’ve used so much of the information from my Big Data and Network Security modules - they have been invaluable to my success at transitioning into my job. My honours year also presented me with more time to pursue events, like hackathons and meet-ups, which gave me more exposure to networking and growing my soft skills. This extra time was valuable since I put in the effort to pursue extracurricular activities, like being on the board for the Developer’s Society. All of this helped me to network with AWS recruiters, which eventually led to me getting an interview. I would personally recommend completing an honours before going into the workforce, as I feel it really helps to polish the skills you learn in undergrad. It was definitely a huge factor in my success at landing a great position and preparing me for what the role would entail. With that said, I do believe it can be person-dependent, and there are absolutely people who succeed without an honours. I think most important is to be realistic with yourself and understand your reasons for wanting/not wanting to complete the additional year. An honours is by no means a guarantee of a job and not getting an honours is not a career-killer either.
Careers
Career Path Interviews
Onalerona Mosimege Onalerona Mosimege is a Software Engineer at Praekelt.org as well as the Co-Founder of Indoni Developers, which organises coding workshops and meetups to empower African women in the tech industry. She studied at UCT and was once the WICS Chairperson.
Q&A
When did you decide that you wanted to become a developer?
I actually knew quite young - I was 14 years old, and had my first experience with development at school, and have been addicted to this world ever since. What was your first experience with development? When I was in Grade 9, my high school did a “test IT class”, and during that class we had to code (in Delphi) a program that had a button, where the button would turn the screen green when clicked. The program, in its entirety, was probably 6 lines of code; but the feel-
ing I got when that screen changed colour was indescribable. I’ve been hooked on programming ever since. Tell us about your career journey so far? Where would you like to be a few years from now? I’d say my career started while I was still studying at the University of Cape Town. I loved community work, and worked with Code4CT, and I was also the Chairperson for WICS. By my final year of varsity, I was both studying and working full time at a non-profit tech company named Praekelt.org. I have since been a backend Software Engineer for that company, working on projects in HealthTech, and working with technologies such as
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I’d say my career started while I was still studying at the University of Cape Town. I loved community work, and worked with Code4CT, and I was also the Chairperson for WICS.
chatbots and machine learning. A few years from now I’d firmly like to be a tech entrepreneur, and I’ve started planting those seeds already!
who aspire to be or are experienced developers. These passion projects don’t feel like work to me, because I love what I do so much. It’s easy to integrate them into my life, because they bring joy rather than added What have been challenges along the stress. Yet, to ensure that both my 9-5 job way and how did you respond to them? and my passion projects receive the necessary attention, I do have to plan my diary a When I entered the field, I felt a lot of resist- week ahead so as to block out periods to ance, being a black woman in tech. There is focus on each. not much representation of women of colour in the field, so it’s easy to feel demotivated. What is your advice for anyone who There have been moments where I felt I did wants to become a developer, no matter not belong or deserve to be at the tables I how far along the journey they are? was invited to. So getting over my inferiority complex, and realising that my skills speak 1. Being in tech is not as easy, so you have to enough for themselves, and realising that be willing to put in the hours. I am worthy and capable, were important steps in embracing and succeeding at my 2. In addition, tech changes so rapidly, so career. ensure that you are consistently doing bootcamps/short online courses/tech passion What has been the most difficult career projects to stay relevant as a developer. In choice you’ve had to make? this field, you need to constantly update your skills and upgrade yourself, or you will be left It was difficult for me at times to switch behind and your skill set will no longer be projects and fields of interest. I was quite viable. comfortable with the backend API development I had mastered in my early days as 3. Lastly, don’t give up. It gets very frustrata developer, so when the opportunity came ing in moments where your code doesn’t for me to go more into HealthTech and chat- want to run, or your project is falling apart bots, I did not want to switch. in production, or any other setback comes along that might make you feel like you don’t I was terrified of the failure that might have what it takes to succeed in this industry. lie ahead, because I was jumping into an Tech is tough, but you’re tougher. You can unknown field. The choice to face that fear, push through any situation. and jump head first into a new area of tech, was the best and most fulfilling choice I’ve How has Covid affected your job as made; as now I have a whole new set of skills, well as your work with Indoni Develand have grown throughout the process. opers, and how have any changes been managed? What are your other hobbies or passion projects? How do you make time for My work was not affected at all, which is a them while being a full-time developer? great perk of being a developer and being able to work remotely. Regarding Indoni I am a co-founder for an organisation named Developers, we had to change how we Indoni Developers, a non-profit organisation arranged our events: meetings and events for African women in ICT. We organise tech became remote, and our 2020 conference workshops and meet-ups, where women was virtually hosted. I think we managed developers share their insights and expe- these new formats effectively - a plot twist riences about the tech industry within our does not mean the story has ended! community. We are a community of women
29 | The Closing Bracket
Careers When did you decide that you wanted to become a developer? My journey into programming and software engineering was initialised more by chance than anything else really. When I was in Grade 8 there were two students from the University of Stellenbosch who wanted to teach some high school learners how to solve problems by writing code for one of their projects. Up until that point, I had not really paid much attention to how the ‘magical metal box that I could play games and watch videos on’ worked, but I quickly developed a thirst for knowledge on how to program and how computers worked. I soon realized I wanted to be a developer.
Career Path Interviews
Q&A
What was your first experience with development? Learning software development versus real-world implementation under a deadline are two completely different worlds. My first taste of real software development at an industry standard was in Grade 9. I had been messing around with code for a few months by that time and had more questions than answers. Luckily that was around the same time that my father wanted to try his hand at creating a mobile app for one of his business ventures, and immediately I saw an opportunity where I could find answers to my questions! So I made sure that when my father had his next meeting with the devs, that I was in that room. They decided to give me a small task with a deadline that completely overwhelmed me, and despite my planning, I was told that my code was terrible. Nevertheless, it gave me a rush and I committed to interning with that company every day of every school holiday for the next three
Jonathan De Kock Jonathan De Kock is a Full Stack Web Developer at Specno (a software and design agency), as well as the DSC’s current Tech Lead.
years, always coming back with more questions than the previous time. Tell us about your career journey so far? Where would you like to be a few years from now? My career as a software developer has been somewhat unconventional. By the time I was writing my matric exam papers, I was writing industry standard code for a tech company (Digital-HQ) and planning to move out as soon as I completed my last paper so that I could be in the office the next day. For the first part of 2020 I was a full time developer for them before COVID-19 disrupted the workplace. It was quite a change to adapt to, but before long we were more productive than every. At the same time I had become a Tech Mentor for the DSC, which was extremely exciting. Fast Forward a few more months and I have since moved to a new development agency (Specno) filled with the most incredible developers, and now act as the Tech Lead for the DSC. I have always had a massive love for business and envision a future for myself where I am in a position that creates synergy between the business and software development side of things. What have been challenges along the way and how did you respond to them? Software development in tech agencies in itself is a challenge, as you have to keep up with learning as well as deal with all the mistakes that arise in your code. It’s the art of writing highly efficient code that is bug free before a specific deadline, so that the client is happy with a product that is deployed on time; one that does not crash and burn when a user types in some-
The Closing Bracket | 30
Programming is an art form and does not necessarily require any special education, so you can become a brilliant developer if you have a high level of curiosity, and the drive to figure out new things and solve problems.
thing absurd like “X Æ A-12” as their name. Other challenges include the rapid speed at which the industry is changing. New tech is being released fast, so as developers the learning never ends! It’s important to always put some time aside in your week for learning new things so that you can stay on top of your game. We are also all humans and therefore we make mistakes. Code on the other hand demands 0 mistakes. You can think of writing code like writing a novel, except for the fact that if you leave out a semicolon, nothing makes sense. Don’t beat yourself up about your mistakes, but make sure that you learn from them and that you do not repeat that mistake. What has been the most difficult career choice you’ve had to make? By far the most difficult career choice for me has been to hand in my resignation at my first development agency to work at another one. You form strong connections with your development peers and it becomes tough to say goodbye to your family, but sometimes you need to put yourself first by biting the bullet and doing what needs to be done for you to grow and reach your goals. What are your other hobbies or passion projects? How do you make time for them while being a full-time developer? I am rather fond of game development and 3D modeling and spend quite a bit of time just creating new things. I believe in living a balanced lifestyle and therefore make a habit of going to the gym everyday as long as work permits it. I absolutely love reading books that touch on concepts around success, personal development and business; and lastly, I really enjoy getting involved with the developer community and attending different programming and business events that take place around me. What is your advice for anyone who wants to become a developer, no matter how far along the journey they are? My advice to anybody who wishes to become
31 | The Closing Bracket
a developer is just to start. It does not matter how young or old you are. Programming is an art form and does not necessarily require any special education, so you can become a brilliant developer if you have a high level of curiosity, and the drive to figure out new things and solve problems. You’ve proven that not everyone needs to study to start a successful career as a developer. For those who are pursuing a degree, what lessons can they learn from your journey to make the most of their time? Everybody’s journey to becoming a developer is unique, and so I will not pretend to have ‘one-shoe-fits-all’ advice, but there are a few things that anybody who wants to become a developer can do to fast-track their time. IT is a really big industry that spans across a vast variety of skill sets, so take the time to do proper research so that you can be sure of exactly what it is that you want to do and what skills are required to accomplish the tasks set out for that role. That way you will prevent yourself from becoming distracted or suffering from shiny-object syndrome when something new pops up. Learning new languages and frameworks and tools can be highly addictive, but also unnecessary. Once you have decided on what it is that you want to do, it is best to find yourself a mentor who will be able to guide you on your path of discovery. I was very lucky to find a group of developers who were willing to take me under their wing and teach me while I was in high school. The developer community is your friend and you should tap into that as much as possible. My last piece of advice from my own personal experience is that practical experience trumps theoretical knowledge in most cases, and therefore I encourage you to attempt as many side-projects as possible while you are learning your new set of skills. Take part in as many Hackathons and code jams as possible, because they give you the opportunity to build apps, test your skills, and allow you to network with other developers.
Grad Profiles Class of 2020
Degree
BSc Computer Science and Computer Engineering (Computer Science Honours)
2021 Plans
Software Development Engineer at Amazon Web Services
The Interview Process
Zainab ‘Zee’ Adjiet How they prepped for the interview
To prepare for the telephonic interview, Zainab went through Amazon’s ‘Leadership Principles’, because the interviewer would likely ask different types of questions geared towards each of the principles, to see if she was a fit for the culture at AWS. She also revised some computer science topics that they advised her to go over, such as different data structures, and the time complexity of each of the operations on these structures. She made a ‘cheat-sheet’ of all the time complexities for different data structures so she had everything in one place. In preparation for the coding segment of the interview, she tried to practise as many string and array manipulation problems as she could find online, as these are quite common for technical interviews. Top tip for final-year students
Lunge at any and all opportunities you can go for, whether it be nominating yourself for an award, applying for internships/bursaries, or participating in hackathons or society events. These are all opportunities to make meaningful connections with people who can potentially help you land your dream job down the line.
Applied directly for a SDE internship Telephonic interview with the first half focussing on leadership, personality, and degree questions Live coding problem m o n i t o re d by t h e interviewers In-person interview for the AWS bursary, with similar questions After completing the SDE internship and getting the bursary, a full-time offer was made subject to completing studies
The Closing Bracket | 32
Careers
Degree
BSc Computer Science Honours
2021 Plans
Junior Software Developer at Electrum Payments
The Interview Process CV and Transcript sent through email to HR
Harry ‘Harold’ Heathcock How they prepped for the interview
Initial screening call
Technical interview & Soft-skills interview
Final step: Soft-skills dinner with the team
33 | The Closing Bracket
For the initial screening call, Harry prepared to elaborate on points in his CV, and did some basic research on Electrum and what it does. As the company works mainly in Java, Harry prepared for the technical skill by refreshing his Java theory (concepts like Object Oriented Programming, Garbage Collection, Immutability). He also did some warm-up coding on HackerRank. For the soft-skills interview, he prepared answers using the STAR format (Situation, Task, Actions, Result) and also did a mock interview. For the final soft-skills dinner, he made sure to know his CV well and be able to explain his interests. Top tip for final-year students
Communicate your thought process during the technical interview, and admit early when you don’t know something: you want to give them insight into how you think and show your limitations, which creates an impression of both confidence and humility.
Grad Profiles Class of 2020
Degree
BSc Computer Science Honours
2021 Plans
Software Developer at Investec
The Interview Process Signed up for internship opportunities on the UCT Career Services website, leading to contact with a recruiter Personality interview with recruiter
Final step: Several technical interviews with representatives from different divisions
Bradley ‘Brad’ Malgas How they prepped for the interview
For the personality interview, Bradley made sure to be able to explain his personality and beliefs, and focussed on being confident and honest. For the technical interviews, he brushed up on his computer science basics, particularly through challenges on HackerRank which provide both theory and practice. Top tip for final-year students
Prepare well for interviews. This includes doing research about the background of your prospective employer and even reading the latest news regarding the company. Using this information during your interview allows you to come across as well informed and interested in the job. Dress up formally wherever possible, and most importantly, don’t be scared to prepare your answers beforehand. There are plenty of sample interview questions online and preparing your own unique answers will definitely give you an edge and make it easier to nail your interviews.
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Careers
Degree
BSc Computer Science and Games Development (Computer Science Honours)
2021 Plans
Software Engineering Graduate Developer at Electrum Payments
The Interview Process
Brooke Stewart How they prepped for the interview
For the initial screening call, Brooke made sure she could discuss each component of her CV. For the technical interview she read up on data structures and immutable classes and other concepts likely to come up. She also had a look at examples of technical interview questions readily available on the internet, to identify areas she needed to take another look at. Due to her busy schedule, she didn’t have that much time to prepare for the interview, but she suggests attempting some example ‘whiteboard questions’, just to get comfortable with them as they were the most stressful part of the interview for her. Top tip for final-year students
Doing internships is a really good idea, not only due to the potential that you may be hired based off this, but also because working at the company will give you a good idea of whether you will be a good fit long-term or will enjoy that type of work. For example, Brooke did another internship at a company that did some work in Virtual Reality (VR). It was a lovely internship and a good experience, but she realised that she didn’t particularly enjoy coding for VR, even though it is a cool technology.
35 | The Closing Bracket
Interviewed for an internship at the end of her second year Initial screening call
Then an in-person technical inter view including a ‘whiteboard’ coding problem Completed internship and was offered a permanent role on completion of studies
Careers
Grad Profiles Class of 2020
Degree
Bachelor of Business Science, Specializing in Computer Science
2021 Plans
Junior Software Developer (Full Stack) at DPO PayGate
The Interview Process
Justin ‘Just’ Dorman How they prepped for the interview
Throughout his university experience, Justin got involved in several internships and work experience opportunities (at companies like Full Stack and MWR InfoSecurity). From these he learnt the art of ‘selling himself’, which better prepared him for interviews. He learnt that he needs to show an eagerness to grow and learn to recruiters. Being able to well portray his strengths and that he is an asset to a company is the first step to capture the interest of interviewers. For the technical aspect, he brushed up on the fundamentals learned throughout his degree and practiced a range of programming questions (on Codewars and HackerRank). The side projects he got involved with throughout university (like the Discovery GradHack and the DSC-Devsoc Hackathon sponsored by SOLIDitech and Aruba) also helped prepare him for the practical assessment. Top tip for final-year students
Received an interview request through OfferZen Video interview with Development Manager and a Tech Lead Interview consisted of behavioural, technical and situational questions Final step: Practical coding assessment
As a graduate, companies do not expect you to know everything. What you can do however, is show your passion, your drive, your interest and your eagerness to learn and grow. I believe that a positive growth mindset is the most significant quality that a graduate can have. Keep upskilling yourself, keep learning, and never give up.
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Our Community in Numbers by Jonathan Hart
Until now the UCT Developer Community has been poorly understood. While it is clearly diverse, with participants from different years and faculties, no efforts have been made to properly understand this diversity in background and experience; as well as to learn the wishes of these student developers and how better to serve them. We conducted a survey amongst members of all three developer societies, and the below analysis is drawn from 160 responses. We hope that - for employers, the university, and the community itself - these insights prove to be useful in 2021 and beyond. Some demographic information
It appears as though most active members in the societies are in their first and second year, which makes sense given that these are years when students are typically more enthusiastic about society membership, and have more time on their hands. However, that engagement starts to decline from third year onwards. The small segments constituting postgraduate students make sense given that: they form a smaller population than students in other years; there may be a lack of engagement because of their research commitments; and perhaps because Masters and Doctorate students plan on staying in academia. However, it is a shame that third year students begin to engage less, with third year being the final year of many undergraduate degrees, including computer science. These are years where extracurricular involvement, hackathon participation, and exposure to ‘real-world’ technologies become most important, as students begin looking for work. Throughout the magazine, a recurring message from successful graduates is that extracurricular involvement is crucial in landing a great job. The community can be said to be ‘male-dominated’, with almost twice as many male members as female. Since we do not know the proportion of
37 | The Closing Bracket
male and female students in the ‘STEM’ departments at UCT, we cannot conclude whether the developer community has more- or less-than-proportional female representation, but we hope that those who do know those proportions can take something away from this statistic. It will be interesting to see whether this proportion changes significantly (in either direction) in the coming years. Finally, the most popular platforms amongst student developers (and likely the best ways for companies or organisations to reach them) are Instagram and LinkedIn, both used by over 75% of the community. Secondary to those are Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub, used by about half of the community.
Year of Study
Year of Study
First Year (Undergrad) 20.63 %
Second Year (Undergrad) 9.38 %
Third Year (Undergrad)
6.88 % 31.88 %
3.75 % 0.62 %
Fourth Year (Undergrad) Honours (Postgrad)
26.88 %
Masters (Postgrad) Doctorate (Postgrad)
What is your sex? 64.38 %
Female Male
2.5 % 33.13 %
Prefer not to say
Our Community in Numbers
students learn languages outside of those they come across in their studies, problematic since these are some of the most likely requirements for graduate developer roles; or at the least, these are languages and frameworks graduates will often work with. They will then have to learn them on the job, potentially slowing career advancement. It also possibly speaks to a failure of the UCT developer societies, as work-readiness is a shared goal, and we have endeavoured to familiarize students with popular web and mobile technologies.
Popularity Social Media Sites Popularity ofof Social Media Platforms Instagram Twitter Facebook LinkedIn GitHub Other None 0
30
90
60
120
150
Programming experience
Over 90% of the community have worked with both Python and Java, which makes sense given that these are the two languages all students doing first year computer science will come across in their studies. The next three in popularity are C# (learnt by students doing Games Development), C++ (learnt in certain optional courses such as ‘C++ with Applications’), and R (used by students that are also doing statistics). Fewer than 10% of students report using common web languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (used in most frontend developer jobs), and there are very few students that know languages/frameworks such as React (used for more advanced frontend development) and Flutter/Dart (used for mobile development). The conclusion here is that very few
Of these languages, Java and C++ take the cake in terms of difficulty, together being the most difficult languages for over 75% of the community. With Java and Python being the most popular languages, but Python only being deemed difficult by 5% of the community (as compared to 53.8% for Java), this might indicate that most of the community will want to get deeper into Python develop-
Hardest Language Other
8.13 % 3.13 % 53.75 %
3.75 % 4.38 % 5%
Assembly C# C Python
21.88 %
C++ Java
Favourite Language
What programming languages do you know? Popularity of Programming Language
Other
Python Java
41.88 %
C++ C# R Delphi JavaScript
43.13 %
Other
5.63 %
HTML
3.75% 2%
R
2.5% 3.75%
JavaScript C# Java
0
50
100
150
200
Python
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ment later in and beyond their studies - concerning for employers who primarily work with Java and are hoping to attract graduates.
Have you done an internship or vac work?
Indeed, Python is more popular than Java, but only by just over 1% of the community, which is encouraging as it indicates that despite its perceived difficulty, many student developers still persist with Java. It might nevertheless be in the interest of employers who use Java to find ways of highlighting its use in the working world, and to find creative solutions to make the language more approachable.
Yes
38.12 %
No
61.88 %
Job confidence
Almost 65% of the community have doubts about being able to secure a job in tech with a degree only, with almost half of those doubtful students flat-out believing they cannot get a tech job with a degree alone. Whether or not this is an accurate assertion, it speaks to doubts towards the relevance of University degrees in today’s tech environment. Perhaps many students looking for internships, part-time work, or graduate roles, have found that their degrees did not help them meet all require-
Is a degree sufficent to get a job in tech? 35.63 %
34.38 %
Yes
30 %
No Maybe
realized their degrees did not sufficiently prepare them; second, less than half of the community have some level of work experience, despite it being a crucial determining factor in many tech jobs at the moment. This lack of work experience during one’s studies may not only come from a lack of requisite experience gained from one’s degree, but may also stem from a lack of information about opportunities in tech. On a scale from ‘not at all aware’ to ‘extremely aware’, only around 25% of the community are confidently aware of their opportuni-
How aware are you of vac work/graduate opportunities in tech? 60 50
55
40
ments for the work. However, only around 40% of the community have actually had work experience, from which we can draw several possible conclusions: first, only a portion of those with doubts about degrees have actually had work experience, which either indicates that students with no experience have just assumed they cannot get a job with their degrees, or indicates that students with experience have
39 | The Closing Bracket
39
30 20
28 24
10 0
14 1
2
3
4
5
Our Community in Numbers
ties. The bulk of the community lie in the middle, but the distribution is skewed towards less-to-no awareness of tech opportunities. We would ideally like to have an environment where every student, no matter the stage of their studies, is adequately aware of vac work or internship opportunities at each year of their studies, and where every student is fully aware of what they can do once they graduate. More conjoined efforts between the university (through the UCT Careers Service) and local employers, to highlight career opportunities in tech, are clearly needed at the moment. Finally, there is still a desire for tech talks or speaker presentations (which tend to be more motivational than practical), and understandably there is a desire for non-technical workshops, to build on the soft-skills discussed previously. Unique interest exists in 1: some kind of outreach program, and 2: long-term projects. The idea of an extensive, year-wide outreach program (such as assisting high school learners with coding) has not been fully explored by any of the developer societies; nor have long-term projects tackled by teams of student developers been seen to their completion.
who only comprise one third of the community. Devsoc saw engagement from just over 40% of the community, and WICS just under 30%. In fact, it is rather impressive that 28.7% of the community attended WICS events, as this signals high conversion rates with its target audience. A fundamental activity favored by each society is the hosting of hackathons. These events demand a lot from participants, often requiring them to ideate and build a tech solution over a very short period of time. These solutions demand expertise outside of what people have learned in their studies, and hackathons encourage participation with large cash rewards and other incentives, in addition to the inherent learning experience. WICS, DSC, and Devsoc all hosted at least one hackathon in 2020, and other such student competitions were hosted by various employers such as Discovery and Entellect. Over 80% of the community are familiar with hackathons, and 10% somewhat aware - it is a shame then that only 36.9% report participating in hackathons, which could speak to two things: members not feeling confident enough to partici-
Do you know what a hackathon is?
Society engagement
In 2020 the DSC proved to be the most popular society, with just over half of the community attending at least one of its events. This is most likely because of the high volume of events hosted by the DSC; whereas Devsoc had some more exclusive events (such as #BreakTheRules); and many of WICS’s events were targeted at female developers,
What societies are you part of at UCT? Devsoc DSC
9.4 %
Yes
10 %
No Maybe 80.6 %
Have you ever participated in a Hackathon 36.9 %
Yes
WICS InvestSoc
No
Entrepreneurs Society Other
63.1 % 0
20
40
60
80
100
The Closing Bracket | 40
pate (a lack of real or perceived knowledge); or the incentives attached to hackathons not being sufficient enough to encourage participation. Hackathons can be quite a time investment, especially amidst the differing and intensive schedules of students - hence, the rewards should be great enough to justify the time away from studies. Beyond cash prizes, other growth opportunities (for example, internship guarantees) might prove to be great non-monetary incentives. An interesting offering by Yoco this year was an hour’s mentorship session with their CTO for the winning team - more value-adds like this could be great in ensuring hackathon uptake. Another change in 2021 could be more entry-level hackathons, for example ones aimed at first or second year students, that only require university knowledge to submit a great solution. This might ease students into the hackathon experience, and encourage them to learn further so as to be able to compete in the more serious ones. Alternatively, a useful initiative could be hackathon-prep workshops to give students a better idea of what to expect. Interests and desires
Virtual & Augmented Reality, Fintech, Quantum Computing, and Blockchain. Beyond technical skills, student developers are realizing more and more the need for so-called ‘soft skills’ in rounding out their skill-set - as employers are looking for the full package. While societies such as the DSC have hosted events such as two Design Thinking workshops, there are a whole host of non-technical skills that have not been attended to by the UCT Dev societies. The most popular of these are project management, interview skills, design thinking, and ideation & business development. Remote collaboration (particularly important in the new world of work) is also quite popular. If the aim across the developer societies is to better prepare students for the working world, then beyond preparing them for the technologies they
What non-technical skills would you most like to pick up? Teamwork Remote Collaboration Project Management
To better serve the community in 2021, it is useful to know what technologies they are hoping to pick up. Web Development and Machine Learning are the two technologies members are most interested in, followed by Cybersecurity and Mobile Development (Android, then iOS). Other topics include:
CV/Resume Building Interview Skills Public Speaking Communication Design Thinking Business Developement Other
Popularity of different types of technology
0
Android
20
40
60
80
100
may use in that environment, we owe it to them to equip them with the soft-skills they will also need to thrive.
IOS Web Machine Learning Quantum Computing Blockchain Augmented Reality FinTech Cyber Security Other
0
20
40
60
41 | The Closing Bracket
80
100
120
In 2021, more than two thirds of the community would like more hackathons and coding competitions (perhaps in line with the recommendations of the previous section). More than half of the community would also like career guidance workshops. The community seems split between entrylevel workshops and intermediate-to-advance workshops, which indicates that a more differentiated approach to the way workshops are run
Our Community in Numbers
What projects would you like to see from UCT’s Developer Societies in 2021? Entry-level technical workshops Advanced technical workshops Non-technical workshops
developer societies, employers, and the University itself, should consider in 2021: • As these are the two most popular platforms, any marketing aimed at student developers should utilize both Instagram and LinkedIn, with content adjusted accordingly to the flavors of these platforms. • Most students only know the languages they have come across in their studies (mainly Python and Java). Society leads should work with employers to understand the most relevant languages & frameworks, and then design a curriculum (events, workshops, and hackathons) around these technologies.
Hackathons Tech talks Long-term projects Outreach Career Guidance Other 0
20
40
60
80
100
120
might be needed. To date, most workshops on a particular technology merely introduce it and its uses, sometimes involving a bit of code, but rarely ever delving deeper into the application of it. This might mean that workshops become less relevant to students in later years of study, which could be a contributing factor to the lower levels of involvement in final year and postgraduate students. For example, if every year there is a workshop on machine learning (which to date have mostly been introductory), then there is no incentive for those same students to attend an almost identical workshop in later years. Segmenting the audience or having follow-up workshops seems like a necessary solution. Finally, there is still a desire for tech talks or speaker presentations (which tend to be more motivational than practical), and understandably there is a desire for non-technical workshops, to build on the soft-skills discussed previously. Unique interest exists in 1: some kind of outreach program, and 2: long-term projects. The idea of an extensive, year-wide outreach program (such as assisting high school learners with coding) has not been fully explored by any of the developer societies; nor have long-term projects tackled by teams of student developers been seen to their completion.
• Student developers believe they need other experience to land a tech job, but most have not completed internships (or gotten involved in hackathons), and there is not enough visibility for career opportunities in tech. The UCT Careers Service should put more effort towards highlighting tech jobs, employers should more aggressively market their available positions and internship programs, and society leads need to rethink hackathons and hackathon rewards to make them more approachable and enticing. • Society leads should prioritize the technologies that the community are most interested in, starting with web development, machine learning, and mobile development. • Society leads should also put greater focus on non-technical workshops, starting with design thinking, business ideation (which could be done with the assistance of the Entrepreneurs Society), and project management. • Beyond hackathons and workshops, society leads should consider outreach programs and longer-term projects; additionally, workshops should be done in a differentiated approach (such as separate introductory- and advanced-workshops).
Recommendations
Looking at this data and analysis, there are several actionable insights that the new leads of the UCT
The Closing Bracket | 42
Member Stories
HAC1000W The course UCT doesn’t tell you about by Kialan Pillay
If there is anything I’ve learnt over the past three years at UCT, it is that a degree in Computer Science only scratches the surface. Whilst your Bachelor’s is an integral piece of your education that introduces you to an array (no pun intended) of fundamental and foundational concepts, it is the many hours of equally frustrating and fulfilling exploration outside of academia that round you out. I landed my first internship in my second year in the June/July vacation, working for Electrum Payments, an established start-up that provides transactional services for the biggest retailers in South Africa (I highly recommend you apply). I had a sound knowledge of several programming languages by this time and had focussed intensely on my studies, but I knew it was time to challenge myself and experience real-life software development. I was thrown into the deep-end with a project in a foreign technology stack and framework. In my fourweek tenure, I had to simply learn, and learn fast. This internship catalysed my career development,
and since then I have not looked back, embarking on numerous personal projects, several successive internships (at Nomanini and AWS), research ventures, and further learning. What this humbling yet enriching month taught me was that there is so much that your degree does not expose you to, and if you want to improve your skills and knowledge, there is no better way than to dive head-first into unfamiliarity and emerge wiser, more experienced, and better equipped for the industry. The Developers’ Society is the most valuable resource for any budding computer scientist at UCT. It is through my involvement with them, that I have taken on multiple opportunities, including an internship at Electrum almost two years ago. In my first year, I attended all their talks but most opportunities were geared to senior students. As second year arrived, I sent in my application for the internship. Yet, I still had not harnessed all the opportunities that Devsoc offered.
About the Writer Kialan completed his BSc in Computer Science and Mathematical Statistics in 2020. He is an
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I entered my first hackathon last year, after finding some motivation from being home during lockdown. Though I have done other competitions, none were the traditional hackathon. Again, each hackathon, like each internship, was a unique experience that taught me invaluable technical and social lessons. Facing intense time pressure, you are forced to rapidly ideate. After developing your idea into a quality solution, you finish it off with a presentation and demonstration. It’s a trial by fire. Win (which myself and my team members did frequently) or lose, you can only gain from such experiences. I urge you to take every opportunity! Whether it be a technical talk, an internship call, a development workshop, take it by the reigns and explore beyond your BSc. You will miss out on not only becoming an incredibly lateral and holistic software engineer - but the fun and enjoyment that comes with dreaming and building. The most important course to register for is HAC1000W.
avid LEGO fan, and can often be found reading, building, or watching a variety of sports in spare time not already devoted to technology.
Source: TrustPulse
Don’t
Forget the User! by Sarina Till
I decided to register for the MIT (Masters in Information Technology) at UCT in 2017 because I needed to convert my academic qualifications into an IT-related qualification. I have only ever worked in the IT industry, but my studies were not aligned with my field. I completed a BA – with the aims of becoming a journalist. I should have known that this was absolutely not the direction that I should have been studying in because I really enjoyed and excelled in the modules that included web development, and truly loathed the other modules. I graduated and started working in the software industry where I completed many certifications, but I still lacked a formal IT
degree. One of the institutions that I used for certifications asked me to teach a module, and over time, I ended up getting more and more involved in academics whilst still freelancing. I later joined a large Private Higher Education Institution and started teaching on degrees and diplomas whilst still rolling out software for the institution. My last project was the rollout of an online submission and student communication system that affected over 3000 students and 200 academic staff members. I completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Higher Education whilst working for this institution, which served as my honours and allowed me to register for the MIT.
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Member Stories
I really enjoyed the degree but the module that really changed the way I do my work was the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) module. I was one of the developers who was unconvinced that users knew what they wanted and often believed that I knew better and that the users just “did not get it”. I saw the HCI module in the curriculum and I was dismissive of it – because I believed it was a soft skill that was not all that valuable.
ask them what they needed, what a system they would want to use would look like, and how they would like to access the system. This led to a system that is very different from what I would have done initially, and we are reaping the benefits of the extra time and knowledge we gained by truly understanding who this software was meant for – including those who were previously outliers.
This quickly changed when I read the first lot of material, started working on the first assignment, and realised that I would have to eat my words. UI and UX have become important in the software industry, however, I don’t believe that HCI has been as ingrained as it needs to be – we would see much better software if it was. This course did not only teach me that your software is only as good as your user’s experience, but also that this experience is incredibly nuanced and hard to truly get right. It taught me that the user experience is only part of what we should consider when developing software.
I am following this mantra in my next project, which is to better understand an online learning space truly aimed at reaching the students I teach in my modules. I need to give credit to UCT for the way this module was taught – the potential was there for this module to be purely theoretical and to present itself as a soft skill that was not all that valuable with a lot of theory to read. The assignments challenged you to design software that meets quite interesting user requirements, and this made the module particularly valuable. I am also blessed with a supervisor who truly lives by what she preaches, and who has been able to share a wealth of knowledge with me. These have had some very real implications for any set of software I’ve touched – and of course, for any course I’ve taught.
The part of the HCI discourse that really hit home for me came through work I started doing along with my supervisor, Professor Densmore. The focus here was on inclusion and ethics, using ICT to assist developing nations and developing software that is not only usable by the general population but also usable by those that have previously been excluded. I realised that a lot of the work I had done previously did not consider those who might not access technology as easily as others, and this learning is following me throughout my career and it is ingrained in any work I do now. The old me would have chosen an online submission system for my institution that meets the requirements of the institution and I would have rolled it out. Post-HCI me considered the fact that I have visually impaired students, students on the autism spectrum, students with bandwidth constraints, older devices, less time, and more difficult circumstances. I took the time to truly understand all these student issues before I rolled out our current approach. I took the time to chat with students and to
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About the Writer Sarina is a 2nd year PhD student who is interested in anything technology related, teaching, and learning in the 21st century as well as human factors that affect technology use and adoption. She is currently completing her 2nd year of her PhD (COVID-19 permitting) and a data science course.
Partner Interviews
SOLIDitech What does your company do and how does it recruit new talent? At SOLIDitech we help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) deliver high-speed Internet Access to people throughout the world. Our pioneering South African built software platform called SOLID aims to simplify and reduce the costs of getting Internet Access, making it accessible to more people - check us out at: www.soliditech.com. In a nutshell - we engineer and grow SOLID, our South African built business automation platform. Our SOLID platform helps leading ISPs to deliver Fibre, Satellite and other Internet-based services throughout 9 countries. We work with a variety of cuttingedge technologies like Mobile Apps, GIS Mapping, Network Integration, Hardware Provisioning and Mobile Money payment platforms to deliver disruptive solutions. Our team is at the heart of what we do - SOLIDitech is after all an engineering company helping our customers solve real world problems. Recruitment at SOLIDitech is a team effort - you’ll get to chat to our HR, Admin and Senior Software Engineers … with even our COO or CEO directly involved in the interview process. We believe that recruitment is a two way street, we like to learn about our candidates, but also assist them with valuable career information and guidance. Why do you think it is important for companies to support student societies? SOLIDitech believes that real-world industry exposure is vital to helping students become successful in the business world. The most important reason to support student societies is that they help grow our future generations by giving students additional tools to help them transition from student to professional. They offer a platform for students to engage with real-life companies and experienced engineers who are solving real world problems, outside of clas-
sic theoretical academic streams. Students are able to thus get an idea of the types of businesses that are out there and how real software companies work, making the working world less daunting. Companies are given the opportunity to teach, guide and build relationships with graduates - the employees of the future - and enable those graduates to build their skills in an environment with a low risk of failure. Through competitions, hackathons, and vacation work, students are quickly able to assess which areas they’re drawn to and which areas they are not without having to job hop in the real world. These opportunities allow us as companies to share our knowledge and help students become well rounded graduates, ready to join the workforce, whether it be our own or another in our industry. We love being able to help grow the Software Engineers of our future. What have been the benefits of working with UCT Developer societies? The building of relationships has always been key for us. Meeting all the graduates, and almost becoming a part of your tertiary education journey. It’s also great for us to keep our finger on the pulse. Technology is evolving at a quicker and quicker pace, and as technology evolves - the solutions to realworld problems are becoming ever more creative. We’ve seen some amazingly creative solutions come out of projects, hackathons, Vacation Workers, training courses, and competitions. Being able to be a part of what has inspired those solutions, or to be able to provide a place for students to be creative, is of massive benefit and importance to us at SOLIDitech. Which events did you enjoy in 2020 while working with the UCT Developer community? There have been so many! Highlights for us have been:
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Partner Interviews
• The 24-Hour UCT DevSoc & DSC Student Hackathon which we co-sponsored. We saw some brilliant projects there
entire section of the UCT student population that we otherwise wouldn’t have had the chance to meet
• Devsoc’s #BreakTheRules Summer 2020 Edition
What is your advice to other companies looking to partner with the UCT Developer community?
• Devsoc’s #BreakTheRules Winter 2020 Edition • The UCT Mock Interview Program. This really gives us a chance to help students refine their ‘pitch’ • The UCT Epic Virtual Career Expo. This is a big one for us every year and our favourite chance to meet you all. This year was a little different though! • The UCT Devsoc & DSC Vac Engagement Program. This was a fabulous initiative from DevSoc and the DSC that let us work with students in lieu of our traditional Work Experience Program (WEP). • The UCT Woman in Computer Science society (WICS) Introduction to Coding workshop series. This really allowed us to introduce coding to an
Do it - get involved. The students are highly engaged, and absolutely prepared to knuckle down and get working on building their careers. This is the perfect time to share your knowledge and skills. Remember: Rising tides raise all ships - and the students of today are the business builders of tomorrow. Any closing remarks? We’d like to extend a huge thank you to the 2020 Devsoc committee for being so flexible and adaptable to the changes and challenges that 2020 has delivered. We’re very proud to be so involved with a number of societies and are very much looking forward to seeing what 2021 brings us. Be careful, stay safe and all the best for everyone who is either starting their careers in 2021 or continuing their studies.
Amazon Web Services What does your company do and how does it recruit new talent? Amazon Web Services is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery, and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow. Millions of customers currently leverage our cloud products and solutions to build sophisticated applications with increased flexibility, scalability, and reliability. AWS isn’t a start-up, but that doesn’t stop us from acting like one. We set out every day to innovate and disrupt the status quo. We pursue unexpected paths and try to see things differently. We don’t just sit back and watch the world change; we’re the ones changing it. And we’re on the hunt for curious and inventive builders who want to join a company where every day is full of challenging and meaningful work. Why do you think it is important for companies to support student societies?
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Together we are building the future, one innovative product, service, and idea at a time. Partnering closely with the Societies allows us to be part of a diverse group of innovative young people, and supporting them in their career goals and ultimately setting the tone for the Future. What have been the benefits of working with UCT Developer societies? Being able to interact with diverse candidates, supporting their initiatives and giving them a chance to interact with people within their fields of interest to guide them and essentially be their advisers. Which events did you enjoy in 2021 while working with the UCT Developer community? #BreakTheRules, which took place in September.
Startup Q&A’s
Dado How did you come across the initial idea for your startup, and what drove you to act on it while still a student? At the end of first year, my now business partner Max Tyrrell and I were brainstorming entrepreneurship challenges that we could try out over the university holiday. Max told me that you could sell a website for over R10k, and he had done so for a few family friends. Immediately, it felt like Max had found us a cheat code to making money, and we left lunch to go
Dado is a JavaScript development hous that outsources South African developeres to the UK without the hiring risk. They attract talent from SA’s largely untapped pool of software developers through their uniquely productive and fun work environment that contrasts from the typical big software development corporates. Dado currently has
door to door pitching websites. After some time, we began branding our company and reaching out to our network for leads, and were lucky enough to take a local brand
4 full time developers who have collectively worked on e-commerce systems and sales funnels that generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue in 2020, while also making funny tech videos (search Dado Originals on YouTube). We interviewed Shai Unterslak, Director at Dado, who just completed his BSc in Computer Science.
from instagram to e-commerce very successfully - and the word of mouth from that drove our next few leads. At this point we realised this might be worth fitting into our
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A fun fact: Our biggest client
sells pet food & treats online! university schedule, because it had legs. What have been obstacles in growing your business? Initially it was setting boundaries for project work. We found most projects increased in scope significantly, and we weren’t firm enough in how we dealt with those situations. We have since moved away from project work partly for that reason, and only provide dedicated, full-time developers for companies. How have you managed to balance your business, your studies, and any other commitments you may have? I have no idea to be honest. I’m not one of those founders who has crazy time management abilities and plans for everything. I worked on university stuff when I needed to, focused on the sections I thought were interesting or relevant to real life, and allowed my marks to drop when they needed to. In 1st year I was obsessed with getting on the Dean’s list, but as soon as I had something else to channel my energy into, I stopped caring as much. I was lucky enough not to need super high marks to
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retain access to my bursary funding. I also realised that a lot of the time I was tricking myself into thinking I was being productive in 1st year. This became clear when I put in half as much time in 2nd year, and my marks only dropped by about 5-15%. What is your vision for the startup - where would you like to be a year from now? Five years from now? Dado is going to make South Africa the only option for outsourced software development. Do you think that all students should try and start something while they are studying? Yes, students have far more time than they think, and being a student means that people are more open to taking bets on you and giving you their time. For some, it’s also a good time to start a company that needs a bit of time to get to profitability, since some people have low living costs as a student. Do you think there is a way that the University or tech companies in Cape Town can better support student entrepreneurs? What type of initia-
tive do you think could create the biggest impact for student entrepreneurs in 2021? Absolutely. I think UCT should incorporate practical exercises in building companies into almost every course. The next generation of business and tech leaders will likely not only be from the commerce faculty. Exposing artists, creatives and engineers to the creativity and excitement of business is super important to build a more diverse eco-system. Hackathons should also have pitching coaches. I would advocate for more hackathons, and bigger prizes. A public directory of student entrepreneurs and a UCT incubation programme would also be cool. Do you have any advice for students who are considering starting their own business? A number one tip? I’ll speak to starting a software business: start with an obvious problem, not an idea. Spend a day learning how to use a tool like Figma to prototype your solution to an obvious, easy to explain problem; go show it to 2 customers a day for a week, and write down everything you learn. Don’t sell them on it! Just ask questions that help you understand your solution or the problem better. Then find a badass co-founder because startups are lonely and hard, and you might have an exam on the same day as an important meeting so might need someone to cover for you!
Viero Viero is a SaaS (Software as a Service) startup that provides entrepreneurs, organisations, and restaurants with a white-labeled ordering and delivery platform that can be used for food, groceries, eCommerce and any on-demand delivery. Entrepreneurs can use the platform to create and brand their own on-demand delivery app, similar to something like Uber Eats, and then sign on restaurants and users and run it as their own business. We spoke to Basheer Phiri, its CEO, who is entering the final year of his BCom Accounting and Finance degree.
How did you come across the initial idea for your startup, and what drove you to act on it while still a student? The pandemic severely affected the food industry, with many restaurants shutting down due to a decline in sales. Many customers’ behaviors changed as well, with fewer people keen on travelling to restaurants, and opting for food delivery instead. My co-founder Hopewell and I ran Zistify, a food delivery platform for university students and staff, and we were forced to stop operating due to the
closure of universities; but we still had a keen interest in the food industry. We started receiving requests from many people who wanted to use our technology (Zistify) to launch a food/grocery delivery business in their community. So after doing some research into the FoodTech market and its costs, we decided to silently launch an MVP (Minimum Viable Product). That is how Viero was born. What have been obstacles in growing your business? The biggest challenge in our journey has been that many local entrepreneurs do not fully understand the food delivery industry and how to run a food delivery business. As a result we have a long
customer onboarding process in which local entrepreneurs (our customers) learn more about the industry and how to run their business. Another challenge is that it is difficult for local entrepreneurs to find delivery partners, especially in places where there are no food delivery services available. As a result, the entrepreneurs have to launch their own fleet (which is costly and difficult to implement). These two major challenges have slowed down our growth and led us to also providing our software directly to restaurants in order to add an additional revenue stream. How have you managed to balance your business, your studies, and any other commitments you may have?
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Startup Q&A’s Being a student entrepreneur has certain implications on your time, and also requires you to make certain sacrifices. Sometimes social sacrifices and sometimes academic sacrifices. Balancing business, academics, and a social life is not easy and usually at least one of these has to be sacrificed at a time. However, I try to work on my academics first, and then move on to my business, and only if I have free time do I work on my social life (like going out). But I also take breaks occasionally and only focus on my social life. The key is not to try to divide your time equally, but to work on what is most important at each point in time. What is your vision for the startup - where would you like to be a year from now? Five years from now? My vision for the next 5 years is for Viero to be the leading provider of Food Technology to restaurants and food delivery businesses in Africa and other emerging markets. It must be easy for entrepreneurs in these markets to launch food and grocery delivery businesses, and for restaurants to start selling food online. It must simultaneously be easy for customers anywhere to order food and have it delivered to their location quickly and at an affordable fee. In the next 12 months we aim to expand on our traction and have 200+ restaurants using our software. Additionally we want 20+ food/grocery delivery businesses operating with our software in South Africa. Do you think that all students should try and start something while they are studying? Not necessarily. There are advantages in working on something
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A fun fact: When we launched Viero, we meant it to be pronounced as ‘Vee-row’, but everyone pronounced it as ‘Vi-yehrow’, so we’ve stuck with that.
while you’re a student, but there are other productive ways of spending your time. These include working internships, part-time jobs, tutoring, and learning new skills. Not everyone has a passion for entrepreneurship and that’s okay. The most important thing is that students use their time to learn new skills and grow their experience. Do you think there is a way that the University or tech companies in Cape Town can better support student entrepreneurs? What type of initiative do you think could create the biggest impact for student entrepreneurs in 2021? The University has been more involved in student entrepreneurship over the last few years, and that’s commendable. They’ve partnered in events like ‘The Pitch’ and even now have a seed fund for student startups (managed by the Bertha Centre). These are great contributions to the space. However, I believe that more can be done, especially for earlier stage entrepreneurs in ideation who have no idea where to start. The Cape Town ecosystem has been there and will always be there. What we need is to connect the UCT Ecosystem to the Cape Town Ecosystem. I am the incom-
ing Vice President for the 2021 UCT Entrepreneurs Society, and this is exactly what we aim to do. We rebranded and restructured the society’s operations from an events-oriented society to running an incubator program which aims to help student entrepreneurs get from ideation to launching their businesses as soon as possible; and then connecting them to the cape town ecosystem through out partners. Other initiatives like the EDHE (Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education) Intervarsity competition, UCT Shark Tank, and The Pitch, are going to create real positive change in the space Do you have any advice for students who are considering starting their own business? A number one tip? The advice I can give is not to be afraid to launch, and just to go out there and do it. Do not waste time and money creating the perfect brand, website, app etc., and find a way to launch quickly and cost effectively. Also, write down a list of all your key assumptions and speak to your potential users to try to validate these early on. And finally, join the UCT Entrepreneurs Society in 2021 to help you on this journey.
Startup Q&A’s Edify is an online platform that offers study guides and questions, and past papers on a personalised learning dashboard. Our conversatoin with Sahil Haridas, one of its two co-founders who is two years into his BBusSci degree specialising in Acturial science, covered how this empowers learners to study both in and out of the classroom.
How did you come across the initial idea for your startup, and what drove you to act on it while still a student? I noticed that most of the other apps available seemed outdated and many had non-intuitive user interfaces. Due to the lack of innovation, I thought I could do a better job and decided to test my mettle. What have been obstacles in growing your business? The perfection paradox: in trying to funnel out all irregularities, the development and release of the app was delayed. We learnt that inertia is one of the greatest enemies of success. You cannot wait until you have the perfect plan before taking action. You need to simply dive in and take a few risks. Evolution is a great way to success. How have you managed to balance your business, your studies, and any other commitments you may have? I try to manage my time as well as possible. This means knowing my capabilities and limitations. This also sometimes means having to stay up later than usual! I try to streamline as much as possible and re-use as many problem-solving
Edify methods and tools already available so that I can focus on creating something that’s different and more optimal. What is your vision for the startup - where would you like to be a year from now? Five years from now? We’re striving to use technology to make learning more interactive and engaging, mitigating the teacher-pupil ratio problem. In the long run, the aim is to inspire a more positive outlook towards learning. We hope that we can enable people to be more encouraged and motivated to learn for mastery and not just for school grades.
in some way. Entrepreneurship drives community development and inspires social change, which are 2 key-issues that need to be dealt with, especially in the current climate. Nevertheless, it isn’t always fun: entrepreneurship requires persistence through periods of potentially catastrophic situations and low motivation, and there aren’t always inspiring words for comfort.
Do you think that all students should try and start something while they are studying? I would definitely encourage everyone to try and add value
A fun fact: My co-founder and I have been friends for 8 years (that’s 40% of our lives)!
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Do you think there is a way that the University or tech companies in Cape Town can better support student entrepreneurs? What type of initiative do you think could create the biggest impact for student entrepreneurs in 2021? The UCT Developer Student Club (DSC), and the Investment Society (InvestSoc) are already great initiatives that provide technical knowledge as well as funding opportunities for student entrepreneurs. An interesting initiative
that could help a lot more startups achieve success would be to provide seed funding via small investments to many start-ups. The aim of that should be to get companies to the point where they’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale. Then they could be introduced to later-stage investors. Do you have any advice for students who are considering starting their own business? A number one tip?
Feedback Dear Reader, We hope that you have enjoyed the magazine so far. In order to improve this magazine’s content and design, please take a few minutes to complete a short survey by scanning the QR code. We would love to know what types of stories interested you and what you felt was missing and could be added to future editions. Best, The Editorial Team
Spend more time talking to users than investors. Also, try to gain as much knowledge as possible. The average CEO reads 60 books per year, so you’re going to have to meet that challenge if your aim is to be disruptive and competitive. Also keep in mind that what you see in the real world is not a mere reflection of people’s intentions; it is difficult to implement things perfectly, and as a result you might be forced to make decisions that you might have initially criticised.
The Editorial Team The Closing Bracket – UCT’s Annual Student Developer Magazine
Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Hart Design & Copy Editor: Jeremy Simpson Managing Editor: Zainab Adjiet Business Manager: Willie Macharia Content Support: Chelsea van Coller & Chris Kateera Front Cover Design: Ardo Dlamini & Lloyd Everett
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