Tell me something about You?

My name is Przemyslaw Baj (you can call me Prem) and I'm 23 years old. I was born in Bialystok, a city in north-eastern Poland, but currently, I live in England. I am studying Computer Science at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton and I work as a developer at OpenStage, a company based in London. We help music artists manage fans' data, analyze and understand their demands, and communicate with them. I am also the Chairman of Beds Computing, so you can tell I love coding. Besides programming, I am addicted to ice skating and I love to play chess and table tennis. I also enjoy learning foreign languages, especially Russian and Spanish.

What inspired you to learn to code?

Watching "Pasja Informatyki" (eng. "Passion for Computer Science") YouTube channel by Miroslaw Zelent, really encouraged me to embark on my programming and coding journey. I came across his C++ course by accident. I was in a trade and economics high school at this time and I liked programming so much that I decided to take a high school graduation exam in advanced computer science - probably as the first person in the history of this school.

Before my current job, I also worked in a Ukrainian international IT corporation called SoftServe, where Marta Joka took me under her wings in my first project. Thanks to her, I had the opportunity to create several softwares for companies such as Dormer & Pramet, McKinsey, SoftServe itself and to get my current job. I am a living proof that it is not what you do now that matters, but what you want to do in the future. Young people should not stop looking for the right path and life passion.

What did you think about COBOL before taking part in our student contest last year?

I heard about the COBOL programming language, and all I knew about it was that it was created a long time ago. That’s all.

What do you think about it now?

First of all, I learned that although the language was created by the United States Department of Defense in the 70’s, it is still used in many vital sectors such as banking, insurance, healthcare, transport, as well as government services. Despite the very extensive and detailed syntax, this language is very fast and used for large-scale data processing. COBOL is very different from all the languages I have known so far, due to its specific paradigm, so I must admit that it took me a while to understand it. I'd like to say a big thank you to Jeff Bisti from IBM. Thanks to his COBOL Programming course, I understood the principles of this language, which later resulted in the completion of the last level of Master The Mainframe 2020.

What fires you up about IBM Z?

What I like the most is that IBM provides real resources in their IBM-Z resources for learning. The code we write on our device is sent and then run on mainframe computers, then we get the result of executed jobs. It's a really interesting experience. Besides, I like to learn new things - during the several years of adventure with programming I have done many things - from programming Arduino microcontrollers, through data-science, ending with quantum computing. I hope it will not stop, probably in a few years, like a Tesla, I will be sending cars into space :)

What do you want employers to know about you?

First of all, I put my heart into my work and I often come up with my own ideas. If I can't do something, give me a week or two and I'll learn how to do it. Currently, I am not looking for a job - I feel very well in my current company, the positive impact of my work is seen every day by hundreds of people in every corner of the world. Although, I have to admit that if I get a job offer from IBM, Google or Tesla, I will be happy to consider it :)