Vinit Shahdeo – The github star from Jharkhand, India
“Coding is not happiness, your life is the finest gift you’ve got, and try to make it count”, says Vinit Shahdeo, one among the 46 GitHub Stars around the world. Vinit is basically from the Latehar district of Jharkhand, and the only GitHub star from Jharkhand, India. He went to Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya for his primary education and completed his Engineering in Information Technology from VIT, Vellore.
Currently, he is working as a Senior Software Engineer at Postman which is India’s most valued SaaS startup and the world’s number one API Dev platform.
Since his childhood, he was always curious about how things work. Every time he saw a computer with an internet connection he got more curious and thrilled with the eagerness to learn. Vinit was always passionate about technology and the decade in which he was growing up acted like “Icing on the cake”.
Here technology was getting advanced day by day and so does his cravings for more of it. While his friends were busy making Facebook and Orkut accounts and passing time, he found himself struggling to understand codes. That was the time when Vinit realized that this is the thing he wants to do all his life. At the same time being curious was not always easy for him, sometimes he had the fear of missing out and he was afraid if he’s doing the right thing. He was not doing what everyone was busy doing, “He took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”.
There was a time a few years ago when Vinit came to know about GitHub, tried knowing its basics, and started using it. Now, this is the time when he’s himself a “GitHub Star”. You can view his GitHub profile here. He adds, “The open-source contributors never fail to amaze me with the kind of work they put in”. Having said that, he has been actively mentoring students for different open-source programs like Google Summer Of Code, etc. Being community-oriented, he keeps sharing his learnings through his personal blog.
“Hardware never goes waste”, no doubt it was a long journey of four years, but in all those four years he tried not to lose his focus and enthusiasm. Back in 2020 when COVID-19 was new and everyone was terrified, he was alone in Bangalore. Whenever his mother called him, he felt the unrest in her voice. One night when she called him, she was very worried about the rising cases everywhere, and unfortunately, she never got true resources to rely upon. Shahdeo says “when you value relationships and family more than anything, you always feel motivated to make them happy and proud”. That was the time when he thought about creating a new website so that he could help people by providing useful information so that they don’t panic and live in peace.
That night, he couldn’t sleep and made “Covid-19 Tracker”. Shahdeo says “I still remember the morning when I completed making that website and showed it to my mother. Trust me, those expressions were priceless”. The Covid tracker gives you access to coronavirus-related stats in a more convenient way. All the information is displayed statewide and it is very easy and quick to stay up-to-date through the graphs.
There was a time, he used to be a participant in hackathons, now after years of hard work and dedication, he has judged over 15 hackathons. In 2020, his team won Smart India Hackathon.
He was always clear about his life goals, there were times when he felt lost, but his passion along with compassion always kept him moving. He says “There’s no substitute for hard work and consistency, don’t compare yourself to others, compare yourself to what you were yesterday, be you own competitor”.
On the ending note, he says “being able to help someone with whatever I know is ineffable”. You can get in touch with him on Twitter. I believe he will always welcome you!