Sarthak Khandelwal

I consider myself good at a variety of tasks involving software development and some other categories like data science or computer graphics. Over the past few years, I have worked over various projects which have given me a vast experience in a variety of things ranging making a simple website to designing complex web servers to rendering complex objects in real time. My expertise lies in a few languages like Java(including Android), C/C++, Python. I am familiar with and have worked on a few projects which involved using MATLAB, Octave, Javascript and SQLite. Although I have programmed using these languages, I am always willing to take up the challenge of programming in an entirely new language like Kotlin and Go and figuring out my way in it.

My motivation to code comes from the fact that I love innovating. I always have various ideas jumping in my brain and can instantly spend a night trying to implement that idea. Even though programming can be cumbersome and tirey, the outcome is always worth the efforts. When everything comes together to give beautiful results, it's a fantastic feeling. That feeling is what keeps me going in the hard times. Apart from this, what keeps me going is the learning perspective of programming. There are so many technologies developing every day, and I love trying those and ideating upon how I could use them myself. I am also an active open source contributor, and I firmly believe in the FOSS philosophy.

In the Summer of 2019, I was presented with the opportunity to intern at Yahoo! Japan which was a highly enriching experience for me. I got to witness how the industry functions and what industry level of programming really means. It was my first time witnessing a "tech job" we always hear about. All of this has really increased my motivation to pursue a successful career in this field and always keep learning new things.

The most complicated project I have worked on would be my Google Summer of Code project. During my summers, I worked for an organisation called MovingBlocks which has an open world game called Terasology. Before my project only one world existed in that game, my task was to implement a universe level system in the game such multiple worlds co-exist. The most challenging part about this GSoC was that was figuring out a way to achieve what I wanted to. I was supposed to work with ancient, thankfully, well-written code. To implement new things in that pre-existing code was very challenging. I have spent hours browsing through the code trying to figure out where exactly my feature would fit in and what would be the most optimal way to do what I wanted.
Another problem I faced what dealing with the environment changes. As it's a very complex game with several systems functioning at the same time, the environment or the "Context" of the game becomes a very crucial thing which needs to be taken care of from time and then. I had to be careful while dealing with changes in the environment because it would end up throwing an error for some other system in one way or the other. Along with this, I made various commands to create and move entities across different worlds. In my summers I have certainly improved on my coding skills and techniques exponentially. From a guy who just wrote his code once and was happy if it worked, I went to being a person who would review his code, make sure it followed all the language conventions and made sure that what I've done is indeed the most efficient way of producing those results.
I have always been enthusiastic about participating in hackathons and interacting with people having similar interests as me. The best part of being in a hackathon is not the prize money; it's the environment you get. That experience is irreplaceable. Hack InOut is India's largest hackathon, and I don't think there is any better place to get that kind of an environment. Hundreds of people just stuck to their laptops working day and night to make their projects. So many ideas, so many innovators all in one place! Along with that Hack InOut provides participants with various facilities and technology which normally is either too expensive or tough for us students to get. Access to those technologies boosts my passion for programming and innovating! The platform which InOut provides is very big and something a developer like me could use. It also a way to test my skills on a bigger scales with people from all over the nation and find out where I stand. It would an opportunity to know what developers around India are working on, what's trendy, what has a higher demand and such. Basically, a very big opportunity for me to interact with the people of similar interests as me and exchange knowledge and information with them.