The Norwegian physicist from the "whaling town" who became a Developer

Meet Asbjørn Samuelsen Nygaard, a 22-year-old coder from the historic whaling town of Sandefjord, Norway, with a unique path into programming. He attended SALT’s Java Fall2022 Class and is now working at ExorLive, a Norwegian company that offers digital solutions for exercise prescription and rehabilitation.

“Before SALT, I studied physics at the University of Oslo, but the pandemic led me to drop out and dive into coding,” says Asbjørn.

He first learned to code in a Java library called Processing during middle and high school. He also tried creating some small-scale arcade games, one, in particular, being a game where you piloted a vector airplane, avoiding incoming mountain peaks in an endlessly incoming procedural 3D landscape.

Asbjørn describes his time at SALT’s Career Program as amazing.

“I got to meet many great people I still keep in touch with and visit. While the course was intense, it’s definitely one of the high points of my life. It really opened my eyes to how much I enjoyed coding and gave me a new outlook on my own capabilities and competence; it’s still insane looking back at just how much we learned in such a short amount of time— somehow more so than the studies I had previously done, yet fully overcomeable,” says Asbjørn.

Despite challenges, Asbjørn sees the Career Program’s intensity as his greatest accomplishment, balancing learning, negotiation, and time management.

“I’ve become confident that anything is possible, extending beyond coding. For instance, I also learned Gnossienne No. 1 (Listen here) on the accordion during my time in the Career Program,” Asbjørn says jokingly.

Today, he works as a frontend developer at ExorLive, using Next13, React, and GraphQL in a flat hierarchy structure that encourages personal growth.

“In the long term, I see myself becoming an expert in web development, sticking to frontend with a wish to explore other areas eventually,” envisions Asbjørn.

In Asbjørn’s journey, SALT sharpened code skills and instilled a mindset of limitless possibilities and personal growth, setting the stage for a promising future.