Ife Ogunfuwa
Two Nigerian students, Salisu Ali of Bayero University Kano and David Ntekim-Rex of the University of Lagos, have emerged regional winners in the annual Master the Mainframe competition, organised by AngelHack and IBM Z Academic Initiative.
A statement by IBM said that their success was an indication that millennials, high school and university students were also rediscovering the versatility of modern mainframe computing concepts and techniques.
The company said Ali, 21, and Ntekim-Rex, 19, emerged in the first and second positions, respectively in the Middle East and Africa region, and were named among the top 12 finalists globally.
Both students’ entries, according to the judges, showcased innovation and their clear understanding of software security and utility principles, which are the two key attributes of mainframe systems.
The other 10 finalists were from Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Nepal and the United States of America, the organisers said.
It read, “More than 17,000 young people from around the world participated in this year’s Master the Mainframe contest, an introduction to programming and application development competition designed to teach students how to code and build new innovations using the mainframe.
“Eighty per cent of registrants were new. Students were introduced to the enterprise systems behind their smartphone apps and gained hands-on experience to inspire interest in pursuing science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers. By participating, students learnt, prepared for careers and could win prizes.”
According to the IBM Technical Solutions Manager, Brian Collins, and the General Manager, IBM Z Team, Ross Mauri, attracting participants from more than 120 countries across six continents, this year’s contest was truly a global contest and it drew the largest turnout since the contest began in 2005.
They observed that millennials were a perfect match for mainframes and that in a world where the focus often seemed on designing the latest app, these contestants entered the competition with the hope of getting jobs on the Mainframe, which was first introduced in the 1960s.
He said the performance of the two regional winners (Ali and David) “reflects well on the ongoing efforts of IBM and other technology firms which continue to invest significantly in Nigeria’s technology ecosystem. This is a positive development,” the Country General Manager, IBM Nigeria, Dipo Faulkner, said.
As part of the contest, IBM made all contestants to create their own applications that dealt with flour, oil and sugar with over 600 different companies worth of data that needed to be sorted and tracked.
Contestants needed to translate multiple flat files of data into dynamic applications that could run on the mainframe without error. It stated.
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