While some people might be gifted with a metaphorical “green thumb,” a bevy of students are blessed with an aptitude to preside over not plants, but computers using their unique abilities. These students excel in the realm of programming and coding and strive to harness and cultivate their respective abilities so that they may thrive in the future. During her internship at Rovi, a digital entertainment company new to Plano, senior Maisha Choudhury was motivated to possibly pursue a career involving computer science.

“My inspiration would probably be my boss Steve Chaput,” Choudhury said. “He told me about computer science so I started doing online courses. Now I’m planning on majoring in computer science and I’m hoping to work in other tech companies like AT&T and Apple and do coding for them.”

Choudhury is not the only tech savvy teenager with high hopes. Junior William Greenfield has big dreams involving making his own biomedical or prosthetic design company.

“I don’t really want to have a desk job programming,” Greenfield said. “I need something more active. I don’t want to work for the man, I want to work for myself.”

Greenfield’s natural curiosity and desire to be self-sustainable and efficient emerged in sixth grade when he created his first website using HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and evolved upon entering high school.

“I would take apart anything I could and try to put it back together, but it would never work,” Greenfield said. “ I wanted it to work, so I would figure it out. I learned as many languages as I could and I’m working on my seventh right now which is Java.”

Greenfield’s past independent programming projects include building an alarm clock car horn, a home automation button and a ping pong ball sorter.

“Computer programming is a hobby that I feel everyone should get into,” Greenfield said. “It’s like doing a Rubiks cube or solving the puzzles you get in your Saturday newspaper. It’s fun.”

Greenfield has also begun applying his love for coding to a practical purpose rather than just amusement by creating a business based around putting his talent to good use.

“I build custom computers for people who ask,” Greenfield said. “I find clients around my dad’s office space. With anything programming-related, if someone has a question, they can ask me about it.”

Similarly, senior and competitive programmer Aneesh Adhikari-Desai offers his skill set as a learning resource for beginner coders.

“I’ve started teaching programming, which puts everything in a new perspective,” Adhikari-Desai said. “It’s figuring out how to tell someone who knows nothing about computers how to make the computer do what they want.”

Adhikari-Desai, co-president of the school’s computer science club, uses his abilities to lead his team to victory.

“We’ve won a ton of local competitions,” Adhikari-Desai said. “We actually had one on Nov. 3 at the University of Texas in Dallas (UTD), where my team placed second out of 43 advanced teams and 67 novice teams.”

Career-wise, Adhikari-Desai plans to go into application development like his comrade, junior Ritvik Annam. Annam aspires to become the chief executive office (CEO) of his own technology company and has already jumpstarted the process by making practical use of his expertise.

“I’ve developed two games which are on the playstore and my own personal site,” Annam said. “If you search Gr8 Bit on the Google playstore, both of the games will automatically come up. I’m working on sites for an actual company now.”

Adhikari-Desai encourages his fellow students intrigued by the field of computer science to persevere through challenges they might face when getting started.

“There’s always an answer,” Adhikari-Desai said. “There’s always a better way to do it. It’s just up to you to find it.”