This spring was very intensive in Oracle Academy Serbia, with many student-focused events taking place in the Oracle office in Belgrade. After a successful visit of students from the Computer Science Grammar School, within the IT Girls project, as mentioned in one of previous blog articles, students from the Mathematical Grammar School also visited us in our office in Belgrade, accompanied by three of their teachers: Stanka Matković, Duša Vuković, and Dragica Ivković.
The students first had a short tour around the office, where they saw a highly productive working environment and spoke with some of the employees about typical activities they perform during their work. The students then had a chance to learn more about Oracle and Oracle Academy from Ljiljana Krkić, Oracle Academy Program Manager, with a special focus on the importance of learning, studying, and developing skills and competencies, and finding joy in it.
The key lecture of the day was delivered by Prof. Dr Milena Vujošević Janičić, Oracle Labs Principal Researcher, and Associate Professor at Faculty of Mathematics, University of Belgrade. She spoke about programming, the pathways to master it and be amongst the best programmers, covering also compilers and the development of the Java GraalVM compiler in Oracle Labs. Compilers in Oracle Labs are being developed by the best programmers, who have all graduated with highest honors and either are already doctors or are PhD/MsC students.
Her presentation was followed by the story of Milica Karličić, Resercher in Oracle Labs and student of master studies at the same Faculty of Mathematics. Milica shared with them the process she went through from studying at the Faculty of Mathematics to becoming an Oracle Labs Researcher, and also explained to the students what one of her typical working days looks like. Her talk was followed by Q&A sessions in which students asked a lot of good questions, and few more topics were discussed in a relaxed atmosphere.
The Mathematical Grammar School is a unique school in Serbia, specialised for students talented in mathematics, physics and computer science, ages 13-18. It was established in 1966, and extended in 2004 to include the two final grades of primary school (ages 13-14). Gifted students are carefully selected through a specific admission process, which includes a specialised entry exam and the assessment of previous achievements.
Students are then guided through a specialised curriculum in mathematics, physics, and computer science by a variety of teaching methods, spanning from the classical to the most modern techniques, including mentoring, in small groups nurturing active knowledge, creativity, originality, integrity, and criticism as greatly valued attributes; developing profound moral, scientific, and civilizational awareness.
Mathematical Grammar School has been an Oracle Academy member for more than 15 years, with numerous teachers attending various training events organized in Serbia and many other countries in Europe. They transfer this knowledge to their students as part of regular curiculum as well as through some additional learning paths and special events, supporting them also in taking part in various competitions and preparing for professional certification exams.
You can see news story with a photo library from this visit on the website of Mathematical Grammar School: https://www.mg.edu.rs/sr/vesti/2024/04/poseta-kompaniji-oracle#gsc.tab=0
Oracle GraalVM is a high-performance JDK that can speed up the performance of Java and JVM-based applications using an alternative just-in-time (JIT) compiler. It lowers application latency, improves peak throughput by reducing garbage collection time, and comes with 24/7 Oracle support.
There is also a native image utility that compiles Java bytecode ahead-of-time (AOT) and generates native executables for some applications that start up almost instantaneously and use very little memory resources.