Jeffrey Zang almost didn’t attend the hackathon that would change his life. As a high school student, the thought of sleeping away from home nearly kept him from JAMHacks 6, one of Canada’s largest high school hackathons. But he went anyway, and those 48 hours transformed his view of programming from a casual interest into a lifelong calling.
“I almost stayed home,” Zang said. “That is the part I think about now. The thing I was afraid to do became the thing that made me want to build for the rest of my life.”
The First Spark
Zang’s journey began in Grade 5 when a teacher introduced his class to Scratch during math. The colorful blocks showed him that instructions could create something that moved and responded. In Grade 6, his father taught him Python, and Zang started building simple terminal games. He was never a passive learner—he preferred to install, break, and troubleshoot on his own.
“I have never been great at learning by watching someone else do every step,” he said. “I learn faster when I am inside the problem. I want to touch it, mess it up, and understand why it failed.”
From Hackathons to Internships
After JAMHacks, Zang dove into web development, landed his first internship at 15, completed four software internships before turning 19, and participated in about 17 hackathons while helping organize six. He became the youngest co-chair of Hack the 6ix, Toronto’s largest hackathon, scaling it to over 1,100 attendees and raising more than $50,000 in sponsorships from companies like Microsoft, Deloitte, Warp, and Linear.
Being young often meant facing skepticism. Companies hesitated, sponsors questioned his place in the room. But Zang persisted.
“Being young made some people discount me,” he said. “Eventually I started thinking, okay, if I do the work anyway, then the age becomes part of the proof.”
His proof grew: named an MLH Top 50 honoree (second-youngest ever), winner of Hack the North with EcoRewards, builder of a 3D-printed conversational robot called Realistic Obama that drew over 150,000 social views, and creator of motus—an eye-tracking wheelchair control system built in 24 hours.
Learning Through Failure
Success didn’t come without hard lessons. During his first internship at uxSino, Zang struggled with Linux and Java. He failed five operating system installs and went days without solving a single ticket.
“I remember feeling completely useless,” he said. “It was not one clean failure. It was waking up, trying again, and still not getting anywhere.”
That experience taught him that failure becomes less frightening after enduring enough versions of it. He saw the same pattern while organizing ClockHacks: two weeks before the event, the budget was only $50. Three days before, it reached $700. The team pushed through.
“That is the part people do not see,” Zang said. “A project can look dead for a while before it works. You learn to keep pushing when the evidence is not comforting yet.”
Building Proletic
Now at the University of Waterloo (4.0 GPA), Zang is building Proletic, a company aimed at easing the daily grind of computer work. Earlier ventures include Opus, a computer-use agent launched in three days that reached 500+ beta users, and an internal AI assistant at Nokia adopted by 200+ employees.
“Shipping changes the question,” Zang said. “Before you ship, you are guessing. After you ship, users start telling you what is real.”
For Zang, the most important lesson is commitment. He believes many things are buildable with one to three months of focus—the harder skill is choosing the thing and not drifting away.
Paying It Forward
Zang’s story comes back to the same message: starting young doesn’t mean starting unready. Rough first attempts count. And sometimes the decision that changes everything is not a confident leap, but showing up anyway.
“I found my way because other people created a place where I could show up,” Zang said. “I want to keep doing that for the next person who is scared to go, or thinks they do not belong yet.”
