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    <title>Meet Andrei and David, two first edition YH4F participants</title>
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 <h1 id="interview-with-Andrei-and-David">Meet Andrei and David, two first edition YH4F participants</h1>
  <p>
  The coding period of the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom hacking contest has 
  been running for almost three months now. The
  competition continues to be a fun contest for young hackers to 
  test and develop their skills. The previous edition 
  ended with 35 great projects submitted with inspiring stories 
  behind them. Read about Andrei's and David's projects.
  </p>
 <p>The rules for the contest are simple: the projects must be Free Software. There are 
 no limits to the possibilities on the kinds of projects that can be 
 submitted. Any technical idea is welcome. This gives each
 participant the chance to create a project according to their wishes, 
 skills, and interests. At the end of the first 
 edition of the <a href="/activities/yh4f/">Youth Hacking 4 Freedom</a> 
 competition, 35 amazing projects had been submitted. Each of these 
 projects has an inspiring story behind it. Let us introduce you to two of these amazing 
 projects. 
 Take a look at Andrei's handy tool for dmenu and David's <a 
 href="https://github.com/david-0609/OpenCV-Hand-Gesture-Control">"OpenCV 
 Hand Gesture Control"</a> project.
 </p>
 <p>
 Before joining YH4F, Andrei was already involved in the Free Software world. He 
 has not only used various GNU/Linux distributions as his main operating 
 system, but also made sure it stays fun with games 
 available for everybody. He recently helped port <a 
 href="https://www.minetest.net/">Minetest (a Free Software game)</a> to 
 the cross-platform library <a href="https://www.libsdl.org/">"Simple 
 DirectMedia Layer" (SDL)</a>, which helps developers to make sure their 
 games are working on different types of operating systems. But instead of 
 sticking to only a technical world Andrei channels his artistic 
 energy into both shell and film scripts. 
 </p>
 <p>
 The mind behind "OpenCV Hand Gesture Control" is David. David has a 
 passion for Free Software and software development. He
 learned the basics of Scratch programming in Grade 3. Since then he has 
 improved his skills and widened his knowledge of programming. David 
 started writing scripts in Python and Bash and has now moved on to 
 learning Rust. After the YH4F contest David has also continued to work on 
 projects such as the <a 
 href="https://gitlab.com/david-0609/matrix-modbot">Matrix-Modbot</a>, 
 which is a bot that automatically moderates Matrix rooms.
 </p>
 <p><strong><span style="color:#3394ce"> FSFE</span></strong>: Hello 
    Andrei and David. Thank you for joining us.</p>
   <p>
   <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: How did you 
   come into contact with programming and how did you learn to program?
   </p>
        <p>
    <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: When I 
    was in China, in grade 3 I was introduced to Scratch programming and 
    immediately became fond of it. Then I learned through experimenting 
    with the program to create simple animations and games. When I got 
    my first computer, I started to learn Python from a video series for 
    beginners. After learning the basics, I began to write some small 
    scripts in Python and Bash for myself. And last year, I managed to 
    secure an internship position at a software company. There I learned 
    a lot and this experience also led me to learning about python OOP 
    design and software design in general. Now I am learning Rust and 
    working on a project called <a 
    href="https://gitlab.com/david-0609/matrix-modbot">Matrix-Modbot</a>, 
    which is an automated bot for Matrix.
  </p>
     <p>
     <strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: I used 
     to go to a programming club a friend of mine invited me to. We were 
     writing C++ to solve some mathematical problems (things like 
     greatest common factor, factorial etc.) though we (unofficially) 
     spent too much time playing games there as well.
     </p>
     <p>
    <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Andrei, can 
    you tell us what was your first contact with Free Software?</p>
   <p><strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: When I was 
 	 going through The Odin Project they required at some point to install a
 	  derivative of Ubuntu (they said nearly half of software engineers use 
 	  it and it’s easier to install software and so on). I was convinced my 
 	  computer would stop booting but went along with it. Xubuntu installed 
 	  fine! Later on I learned all about the parts of the free GNU/Linux 
 	  operating system and how they work together so now I have started 
 	  writing package files (PKGBUILDs) on Arch so that I may too try and 
 	  contribute to this freeing ecosystem.</p>
  <p><strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Andrei, you have already 
     coded before and used Free Software in your daily life. What motivated you
    to participate in the YH4F contest?</p>
    <p><strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: I did not 
    know the FSF had an European sister organisation before and I was really 
    happy to get involved! I really liked the way the contest gives an 
    opportunity to choose a concrete, practical task and go through with it. 
    (Too often I get stuck halfway on coding a cool thing, and that’s not great.)</p>
    <p><strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: David, what motivated you 
    to join the YH4F contest?</p>  
        <p>
    <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: I saw the 
    advertisement on Mastodon and became interested in the competition, 
    so I joined and used my free time to work on the project.</p>
    <p>
    <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: David, how 
    did you come up with your project idea to use your hand motion for 
    executing commands?
    </p>     
  	<p>
  	<strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: It 
  	actually started while I was trying to read novels or to watch movies 
  	on my laptop. When I read, I am usually in a relaxed position and I 
  	find it cumbersome to reach for the mouse or the keyboard to turn 
  	pages, so I thought: What if I can turn pages or pause the video with 
  	the wave of my hand? And that is how I got my idea for the project.<br/>
  	</p>
 <figure>
 		  <iframe title="Hand gesture detection" src="https://download.fsfe.org/videos/yh4f/Hand-Gesture-Detection-Demo.webm" allowfullscreen="" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe>	
 		  <figcaption>
 		  David demonstrating his "OpenCV Hand Gesture Control" project.
 		  </figcaption>
 		</figure>
 	<p>
 	<strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Andrei, could 
 	you also give us an overview of your project
 	</p>
 	 <p>
 	 <strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: I added 
 	 clipboard functionality to a dynamic menu program called bemenu. 
 	 Pressing ctrl-Y inserts the system clipboard into the command's 
 	 command buffer now.
 	 </p> 
 	<p>
 	 <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: What 
 	 motivated you to work on your project?
 	 </p>
 	 	<p>
    <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: It was 
    mainly to solve my own problem, and my program could also be used on 
    smart TVs or other devices with a camera to control the device 
    without using a keyboard or a controller.</p>
    	 <p>
    	 <strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: The bemenu project 
    	 is written in C, and it sounded nice to maybe learn to do some advanced tasks in 
    	 C like programmatically copying and pasting. That it would solve a practical 
    	 problem for me was a nice bonus too.</p> 
 	 <p>
 	 <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Andrei, could you 
 	 briefly explain what a dynamic menu like bemenu is?
 	 </p>
 	<p><strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: A dynamic 
 	menu takes in a list of things, for example some URLs, or some commands, 
 	or usernames, and allows matching and selecting one of them. For example, 
 	typing in fire or fox will match firefox but still allow selecting fire 
 	or fox by itself. This means, for example, that finding and running a 
 	command is made much easier. Think of it as a start menu, except one 
 	that can be programmed to be taken into other programs, like for example 
 	using it as a password prompt or a confirmation box. This works because 
 	it always gives back the thing that was selected, and that can be used
 	by a different program.</p>
 <p><strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Did any of you encounter 
 any problems during the coding period or the building period?
 </p>	
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: I did 
 encounter many issues, and they were mostly some design flaws that I did 
 not anticipate. At that time I had little knowledge about software 
 design and was struggling to make the code clean and cohesive.
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: It turns out 
 getting clipboard data is not the same everywhere! It is one thing on X11, and 
 a different thing on Wayland. At first, writing a clipboard manager myself 
 sounded fine (a likely story!), though eventually I decided on using 
 wl-clipboard and xclip. I am glad I learned to not be excessively afraid of 
 pulling in dependencies where it really solves a complex problem that writing 
 by hand would make little sense.
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: David, can 
 every user define the shortcuts themself and do you have an example on 
 how your program works?
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: Yes, and 
 there is an example config file in the git repo of the <a 
 href="https://edugit.org/david-0609/OpenCV-Hand-Gesture-Control">OpenCV-Hand-Gesutre-Control</a>. 
 For example three fingers to the right open a terminal window.
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: How did you 
 train your tool to recognise your hand movements?
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: The hand 
 movement recognition is based off OpenCV, however I used a 3rd party 
 library to provide a trained model as implementing the same model myself 
 would be “reinventing the wheel”, but this time the wheel would probably 
 not spin as well.
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Andrei and David do you think you will
  continue working on your project and what would be some next steps you would 
  like to realize?
 </p>	
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#ce6d33">Andrei</span></strong>: I think I am happy 
 with how the project is right now! They may say code never stops changing, but 
 when something is really finished that is great feeling. I’m sure I’ll be back 
 at it if something feels like it needs improvement though! My confidence is 
 certainly there now. 
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#d0f400">David</span></strong>: I think I 
 will work on the project in the future and re-factor the code as it is 
 currently quite messy and somewhat buggy. To make the detection more 
 accurate, I could use the power of python’s data science libraries to 
 make better sense of the input data.
 </p>
 <p>
 <strong><span style="color:#3394ce">FSFE</span></strong>: Thank you for 
 your time and we wish you both good luck with your next steps.</p>
 <p>
 The coding period for the second edition of YH4F is still ongoing. 
 For more information about the contest please visit <a 
 href="/activities/yh4f">yh4f.org</a>.
 </p>
 </body>
 <tags>
 <tag key="front-page"/>
 <tag key="interview">Interview</tag>
 <tag key="yh4f">Youth Hacking 4 Freedom</tag>
 </tags>
 <discussion href="https://community.fsfe.org/t/947"/>
 <image url="https://pics.fsfe.org/uploads/medium/9594f30fb15a8edf5082d60baac594bd.png" alt="Three young hackers are tinkering on their laptops"/>
 </html>