YEREVAN. – Any new person in programing should learn Java Script deeply, not matter whether you are doing backend or frontend, JS is where money and opportunities are, says Iterate hackerspace founder Edgar Harutyunyan.
He claims JS this is the most popular and easiest language to learn, and all companies need JS developers.
My acquaintance with Edgar started a few months ago, when in Facebook’s Armenian Developers Meetup group I noticed his first post. He had recently moved to Armenia, and was offering professional support to everyone who was interested.
Hackerspace was founded before my eyes, and two months later Iterate team won “Technological Breakthrough” award at Fintegration hackathon.
“We came up with the idea on a bus. We’ve just decided to participate and done. In fact, I’m extremely proud of my team. Just think, many of them are 17-18 years old students with several months programming experience. Considering that the greatest evils in Armenia is the corruption, we decided to develop a solution, which will help to see all major financial transactions online. This will help, for example, to understand the level of inflation and other important information in real time at the moment,” he says.
“The idea to establish a hackerspace came to me after I’ve moved to Armenia. Actually I was missing San Francisco hackerspace, where I used to work. There a many awesome programmers in Armenia, but here we don’t have the culture of sharing our knowledge. There are 50 professional meetups per day organized in San Francisco, but only one per month – here in Armenia. So the hackerspace had been established. Why Iterate? Because “Iterate” means “to repeat”, in our case – to repeat for doing better”.
Ordinary Armenian citizen will hardly understand Edgar. To my question what moved him to drop the opportunity of working at Facebook and move here, he answers confidently: “It has to be done. Just the last events in Armenia rushed me a little. Was it a call of blood or well-made decision, I don’t know, may be the first. Actually I don’t like to talk too much. There’s an English proverb “Talk is cheap”. In general, people in Diaspora (and I am from Diaspora) talk too much about their patriotism – too much talk. We love money to be transferred to Armenia and mainly this is the end. But the real work is here, we should come back and build our country”.
Edgar thinks tech is able to change the entire economy of the country.
“Tech is an amazing direction, it can change an entire society. IT sector developed amazingly in the last few years and can give a serious impetus to the development of all sectors. Tech can help us to build a middle class, which, in fact we don’t have in Armenia. The goal for the people like me is to build a tech environment, which will inspire others to come back. I want a Silicon Valley culture here in Armenia. Returnees will bring their knowledge, connection and culture, which we need here like an air,” Edgar Harutyunyan explains.
Immigration is a serious problem, Edgar thinks. In his opinion money are the main issue for us.
“We need financial independence. You know, people are doing awful things because of money. My goal is to teach young people to earn money, big money. When a person gets financial independence, then a country has independence in the real sense”.
We talked also about the security issue. Edgar thinks IT can guarantee country’s security as well.
“Not having a financial and human resources, our brain and intellect is the only thing we can lean on. You know, the programmer is a dangerous person,” jokes Edgar. “One good programmer can defeat an army. The 21st century is an information warfare century, and I’m sure, that IT sector’s development will increase security guarantees”.
