Nikola Granolić from Banjaluka has been interested in science and technology and everything related to them since childhood, and his interest grew into knowledge by studying at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (ETF) in Banja Luka, where he finished his fourth year of study with an average of 9.3.
As he points out in an interview with “Nezavisne novine”, when he was in elementary school, he liked to read encyclopedias, and how to search on the Internet, how to play games on the phone or how online stores work, are just some of the questions he got answers to at the university.
– At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, of course, a very wide range of scientific fields are studied, from computer science to electronics and all the way to automatics, but in the fourth grade of high school I decided to major in software engineering at ETF, because I was most interested in programming, which I started learning in high school through classes and extracurricular activities, says Granolić.
That he took the right step when choosing a faculty is also confirmed by the index in which he scored tens for all five subjects during the last semester, and as he points out, he is glad that he finished one semester with all the highest grades.
– It was very challenging, but when before the exam period I plan my exam obligations for the upcoming exam period on paper and when I stick to that schedule, somehow things don’t seem so impossible and when I solve the obligations one by one, he explains.
He now has the opportunity to pass on his knowledge to younger colleagues, because as a demonstrator he was engaged in two subjects: Programming 1 and Programming 2, and doubts about whether he was up to the task disappeared when he started holding exercises.
– In the first week, I needed two or three classes to relax and get used to working with students. Now I am much more relaxed and I can already often notice when one of the students needs help, which is not bad, because freshmen are often shy and they need me to make that first contact so that they see that it is normal that sometimes something is not clear to them and that the assistants and I are right there to help them master the material , Granolić points out for ” Nezavisne novine “, adding that through the position of demonstrator, he has significantly improved communication with the assistants and professors.
The engagement at the university allowed him to see firsthand what it’s like to work with students, and as he points out for “Nezavisne”, he would like to stay working at the university after completing his studies.
– I can say that I like such a working environment, where I have the opportunity to work with people, but also to deal with scientific fields that interest me. I am especially pleased when some of my friends and colleagues tell me how they can imagine me as an assistant and how they think I would do well in that position, he says.
Last year, together with three colleagues, he tried his hand at a so-called hackathon competition, in which they had less than 24 hours to implement an application on the topic of a smart community of apartment owners, and they won second place for their application.
In the conversation, we also touched on artificial intelligence and machine learning, which, according to him, are not new things, but what has significantly increased interest in those areas is the emergence of new architectures that have led to tools like ChatGPT.
– I notice how such tools are increasingly present in programming practice, and that this is already slowly reflected in the division of work and responsibilities that the programmer has. I believe that the value of the formal education that my faculty provides will increase, because artificial intelligence already gives solid results when we give it clear instructions what kind of code to generate for us, but the engineer will still be the one who will have to know how the application should look, that is designed, and to integrate it with existing systems, especially when the problem that the application solves is very domain specific , he explains.
Owner of a diverse record collection
Three years ago, Nikola started collecting records, and it all started when he got a record of his favorite band on a trip, after which he also got a record player.
– Since then, I have received many records as gifts from family members or bought them as souvenirs from some trip. The collection is very diverse, with more than 100 plates. In it you can find classic rock, but also alternative rock, says Granolić.
Source: studomat.ba
