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| Stephen Antony, student, Fathima Matha National College, Kollam. ( www. stephenantony.net ) |
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19-year-old Stephen Antony pursuing his graduation in chemistry at the Fathima Matha National College may not be well known in Kollam but he is already a noted presence in cyberspace for his software and coding skills. Thrice winner at the website Planet Source Code’s “Superior Coding Contest”, where his competitors were IIT students and professors of engineering colleges, he is already a professional providing solutions to overseas firms.
He recently developed software for the US-based Worldpay Internet Bank, which enables the bank to provide customers with instant updates. Several other commercial establishments were also given such software programmes free.
Stephen gets invitations from prestigious institutions and engineering colleges to deliver lectures on computer based topics. One among these was at the Mahatma Gandhi University the other day. He also has an invitation from IIT, Mumbai.
Stephen took to computers at the age of 10. While his friends were hooked on to browsing or computer games, he was fascinated with the way the computer works. “Even now when I sit before a computer, I get the feeling of having an Aladdin’s magic lamp in my hand,” he says.
At the age of 13, he created his own website. Incidentally, his new website stephenantony.net gets an average of 50000 hits per day. Though he had never undergone any formal computer training at that time, he used to even write software for free downloading and modification.
His website projects his strengths as C, C++, Perl, creating anti-spam, security and hacker-monitoring tools, spyware removal and WAP-based client and server side application development.
One of his ambitions is to develop a new programming language. “We don’t have our own programming language and for that proper research is required,” he says.
Courtesy: Ignatius Pereira, The Hindu, December 28, 2004
Contributed by: Administrator
