"YH4F encourages young students to be brave and resilient"
Youth Hacking 4 Freedom would not be possible without the amazing teenagers who join this contest, our incredible sponsors and donors, whose support is vital, and our expert jury, who evaluate the projects. One of these jury members is Brielen Madureira, who talked with us before the participants have to submit their projects.
16 professionals with a different focus on Free Software come together as the Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F) jury. They cover a wide range of technical aspects – from a focus on large language models, to leading major Free Software projects and kicking of innovations in their field of expertise. This diversity ensures that, regardless of the type of project submitted, there is always an expert available to review it and offer valuable feedback to the participants.
We have talked with one of our jury members, Brielen Madureira, a Doctor in Computational Linguistics from the University of Potsdam, and interested in evaluation and ethical considerations of language technologies… and birds!
FSFE: Thanks Brie for talking with us. What inspired you to become a jury member for this competition?
Brie: The fact that it is an amazing educational initiative. It encourages young students to be brave and resilient, gives them an opportunity to use and improve their knowledge while building useful software and, in the end, rewards them (and us) with a trip and tasty food : )
Based on the jury’s scores, the six winning projects receive a cash prize ranging from €1,024 to €4,096. The winners are invited (with all expenses covered) to the award ceremony held over a weekend in October in Brussels.
FSFE: What do you enjoy most about being involved in this kind of event?
Brie: Witnessing how bright young programmers are, how much they learn during the process (even on their own!) and the amazing, well-articulated projects that they can develop.
FSFE: If you had to choose only one, what would be your favourite thing about this competition?
Brie: It gives visibility and networking opportunities to the participants.
FSFE: What skills do you think are most important for participants to take part in this competition?
Brie: Knowing how and when to look for help and resources in order to overcome problems in coding, being able to change gear and reshape the project when needed, having the ability to think beyond the code itself and be aware of its benefits and limitations in relation to future users.
FSFE: Have you seen any common mistakes or challenges among the participants?
Brie: Lacking documentation. It is very disappointing to open a repository that may contain an awesome and well-developed idea which is not well communicated or explained. It gets harder to judge its quality and usefulness without knowing how it works, what it can be used for, how to install it and so on.
FSFE: What impresses you the most in a project?
Brie: Seeing it has an outstanding documentation and that it provides a solution to a problem that can potentially benefit a whole community. Even better when the views of that community directly influenced the development of the solution.
FSFE: Why do you think this programming competitions is important for teenagers?
Brie: In school, we learn how to read and write in our own language and possibly in other natural languages, but not everyone has the chance to learn a programming language from early on. This competition is an incentive for young students to seek that knowledge and see that it can create great things. Besides, it is important to incentivise the principles of Free Software among young programmers.
FSFE: What advice would you give to young programmers who want to improve their skills?
Brie: Refactor your own code, review other people’s code and contribute to Free Software repositories. Learn the best practices and the native style of your preferred programming language. Stay up to date with the latest developments in the community. Talk to and get feedback from the users of your tools. And always document your code well.
The 2025 edition of Youth Hacking 4 Freedom started on 1 January, with the programming phase now in fullswing. Visit the YH4F website for more details about the competitoin, the sponsors and the previous winners.