Adolfo Builes

Adolfo Builes is a 21-year-old programmer from Colombia. He started programming in college but got into Ruby, a newer programming language, through projects on Github. “A good friend I have learned lots from, one of my mentors, talked to me about it and I opened an account over there, and I started to get familiar with git,” he explains. Many of the languages people use on Github, including Ruby, Python, and PHP, are less commonly taught in computer science classes, but they’re very much in demand by tech companies. “I have lots of friends who have already finished university and haven’t been able to get a job,” says Builes. “For me it’s easy to get freelance jobs, and pretty much all the jobs I’ve gotten are because of my open source experience. I think nowadays if you have stuff online, you’re contributing to open source, it’s easier to make a career.”