The spotlight is on Nikola Tasic, Compute Grammar School, Serbia.

Little did Nikola Tasic know it back in high school, but acquiring technology skills through Oracle Academy learning resources helped him become job ready for dual careers in web development and teaching.

Tasic spent two years studying with Oracle Academy Database Design, Database Programming with SQL and Database Programming with PL/SQL curriculum at the Compute Grammar School in Belgrade, Serbia, an Oracle Academy member.

With foundational Oracle database technology in his back pocket, Tasic moved on to higher education in 2015. He attained a degree in Applied Physics from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and a degree in Computer Science from Union University, Faculty of Computing.

After graduating, he taught courses in computer hardware and logic at the Mathematical High School, Belgrade, and at the Faculty of Computing, Union University. Today he has a full-time job as a web developer and teaches software engineering part time at his former high school.

Tasic’s career path to date illustrates the effectiveness of Oracle Academy’s guiding principle: to provide educators with the resources to help students succeed in their careers.

Oracle Academy: Can you tell us about the database courses you took at high school?

Nikola Tasic: Database Design, Database Programming with SQL and Database Programming with PL/SQL were the only database courses I ever took. But they proved to be invaluable to my later work. I learned how databases function, how they are designed and programmed, and how they underpin applications development. These are essential skills for almost any company these days. Oracle Academy enabled me to do the work that I do. I did not attain the knowledge anywhere else.

Oracle Academy: So, no more study of Oracle at university but the basics smoothed the way…

Nikola Tasic: That’s right. I chose parallel tracks in computer science and in applied physics. The courses did not cover databases or programming, but an understanding of relational databases made it easier for me; they are the foundation of all software engineering.

Oracle Academy: One of your jobs is software engineer in a web development company. In what way did your education using Oracle Academy resources help in this role?

Nikola Tasic: I’ve been able to leverage what I learned from Oracle Academy curriculum to speed up applications development and time to market. The company I work for builds platforms that automate subscription-based e-commerce. To build apps you need a database. It helps that I understand the workings of an underlying database, how to handle code, and how to implement good design practices.

My high school courses also have helped in managing persistency, storage, backup, and associated web services. And yes, there is a tie-in, in that we use MySQL as the database for our development work.

Oracle Academy: And in teaching?

Nikola Tasic: My course is called Programming and Programming Languages. It’s a mixed course for third and fourth year students that combines algorithms with practical tasks. I introduce them to object-oriented programming, mainly using C# with a little bit of Python. C# enables developers to build many types of secure and robust applications and is fundamental to software engineering.

Students who join me have already taken, through my colleagues — most of them Oracle professionally certified — the same Oracle Academy courses that I did. This is really useful, because if students need a reminder of the building blocks for software engineering and apps development, I can pull up Oracle Academy slides whenever necessary. I might need to go over the fundamentals of creating and updating tables, or of creating and managing relationships — all the skills I acquired eight years ago.

Oracle comes back into the picture during the final year practical exercises where students use MySQL. The task is to create a student records system, with the application connected to a MySQL database instance.

Oracle Academy: What other takeaways can you share with us related to learning through Oracle Academy resources?

Nikola Tasic: What’s really valuable is the modelling of real-life problems. Before taking Oracle Academy courses in high school, my education was more scientific — math, physics and chemistry. Oracle Academy curriculum was my first glimpse into the more "industrial" world. What I mean by this is that, when making commercial software, it is not enough to just think in terms of problems, sub problems and steps towards a solution. We have to think about the organization of data, of data persistence. Oracle Academy teaches you how things interact as parts of a whole. Studying databases introduced me to new ways of thinking that weren't purely algorithmic but more organizational. And that was a powerful awakening.

Oracle Academy: Thank you. And you, outside of your classes and work, what interests have you?

Nikola Tasic: I live in a village on the outskirts of Belgrade surrounded by forest where I love to go walking. There is an orchard, a vineyard and beehives on my property. I make red wine and also mead, which is fermented honey mixed with water. It’s a great pleasure and I’m getting ready to bottle up a new batch.

Otherwise, I play guitar and piano and I love languages. I speak English and German and I’m learning Latin. Latin helps me to go deeper into another passion, Roman history. I am fascinated by ancient civilizations. Even as a young boy I taught myself Egyptian hieroglyphs, trying to understand the meaning behind the symbols.

Thank you, Nikola Tasic, for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact.