Neel Shah

Neel Shah, also known as "shmabulock" in the competitive coding circuit, "nilshah98" elsewhere, am a web developer, coding for almost 2 years now, dabbing into Machine Learning, and Blockchain once in a while now.
Have been playing with computers for quite a few years now. The things that they could do fascinated me, but I didn't have a clear path etched out for me to follow, en route to being a Computer Engineer. Opting in for BTech in Computer Engineering, opened new avenues for me. Seniors and faculties alike, who helped me tread my way. I started out small by building static websites for the college fests, which really got me into development in my second year, from then on web development has stuck with me. Alongside, also got into competitive programming with my friends at college, and ended up getting selected for ICPC regional rounds.
The captivating world of computers and their endless possibilities drives me to venture more and more in it. Recently learned React, and from what I used to do earlier, cramming in HTML intertwined with CSS and JS to build web pages, it was ugly, though node packages helped to an extent, React opened a whole new way for front end development ! Alongside this hunger to delve into newer technologies, the inherent feeling to help people out, has also driven me. As technology is something that can breach boundaries to help and assist people.
Apart from making static web pages for college fests, also interned at ERPnext, for making their next ERP product on the Frappe framework with VueJs. Understanding and handling such a big codebase, how the components interacted and interfaced was something complex, and new to figure out.
Apart from web development, have also delved into Blockchain and Machine learning. Participated in my first blockchain hackathon recently, it was fun and frustrating at the same time. Fun, for something new we learned and frustrating for how volatile and changing the solidity ethereum network is, every 30 minutes we would run into a new error, Insufficient gas!
On machine learning front, following the bible that is - Stanford Machine Learning- Andrew Ng course, almost done with it. In parallel, looking into its application as well, using Tensorflow, to build neural nets and predict celebrity faces, that is.
That's most of the work I have done on the tech side, other hobbies include, music, movies, tv-series, paying attention to those details in them. Also, taking long walks, listening to podcasts, cycling and organizing stuff, is fast growing to be a favorite hobby as well.
Getting selected to this hackathon, will open new doors to network and learn from like-minded people out there, scribble down and implement new ideas, and maybe just maybe, collaborate on something big in the future !