Interviewer: Lamia Gamil
Editor: Khaled Mohammed
“You can’t know everything, but you must learn to do anything,” is a line that caught my attention during my interview with Code-ology CEO Seif Khalifa, and one which sums up the story behind his success.
Seif Khalifa is a 16-year-old Egyptian high school student, whose great ambition enabled him to pursue his dreams and gain a massive head start in the coding scene at such a young age. Seif didn’t discover his passion for coding until 9th grade in the IG system. While he was initially planning to pursue a career as a pilot, everything changed when he got curious and wanted to learn how to create his own game, specifically on the Game Boy Advance.
As Seif started digging deeper into coding and learning different programming languages, it hit him: he aspired to pursue a career in technology, he felt that coding was a natural skill embedded within him. Seif attended conferences like the Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences, where he was a data tester and got really engrossed in understanding the different software developments and updates before they were released. Moreover, he was adamant when it came to learning about and stay up to date on the latest news regarding Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and other tech industry giants.
In light of this, Seif started Code-ology and began offering courses with the aim to enlighten the youth (between the ages of 13-19) about computer science. In the process of bringing this project to life, Seif faced many challenges due to his young age. He was struggling to make people take him seriously, yet his perseverance and charismatic character gave him the strength to wake up every day and try again until Code-ology was able to hit many great milestones.
Unlike other coding courses, Code-ology is not focused on robotics; through his course, Seif wants to shed light on the importance of computer science that goes beyond the fact that it’s a reputable and highly profitable position. He wants to give students a glimpse of the skills needed to pursue a career in computer science, and teach them how to deal with the challenges that come with this field.
The Code-ology course covers a wide range of topics like HTML, front-end, back-end, CSS, and much more. Students who finish the course will be left capable of developing a fully functional website from the ground up. Seif is determined to provide a friendly environment for students by appointing university peers as leaders who’ll be able to easily deliver the course content to the students, as well as, create long-lasting friendships between the instructors and students. In a few years down the line, Seif is expecting Code-ology to grow and become legitimate. He is also hoping to provide virtual courses so that coding becomes more and more accessible to youths.
Seif believes that coding will be a mandatory skill in the future. A piece of advice that Seif would like to give to all the coders out there is that a coder must be hardworking, able to stay up-to-date, and receptive to new information, as the world will never stop evolving and new technologies are going to be developed and implemented.
For further information or inquiries about the course, please visit @code.ology on Instagram.
