Avid coder devotes dozens of hours linking lonely seniors to teens, among other projects, then aces his N-Levels

SINGAPORE — Unlike his peers who spend their free time playing video games or socialising, Felix Isaac Lim, 17, prefers to spend his downtime scouring volunteer opportunities online that involve coding.

The avid coder, who has been at it since 13, has worked on six projects so far including creating one programme to help teens stop binge-watching Netflix and another to connect lonely seniors with teenagers.

The Hillgrove Secondary student was among the 13,000 students who received their N-Level results on Monday (Dec 19).

Felix scored a Grade 1, the highest grade, for both his N-Level subjects Additional Mathematics and Humanities ((Social Science and Geography). He is taking four other subjects at the O-Level.

Felix said that he spends around 20 hours in a school week on coding projects, on top of his three to four weekly volunteering hours with the Bukit Gombak Eagles Interact Club, a non-profit community outreach organisation.

He said he is motivated to learn from other people when volunteering, and of his six projects to add value in people’s lives, three of which served the Singaporean community, directly. 

Of his three community-centred projects, his most recent is Netflix Addictector, a web browser extension that detects and blocks Netflix when a user exceeds a pre-determined watch time limit. It has been installed 300 times with 64 weekly active users. 

“I wanted to do something different from gaming every day, and I picked up coding through online videos,” he said, describing his first experiences with coding when he was in Secondary 1, during the June holidays.

His first project, and most widely adopted, was a Discord bot that moderates content for communities on the Discord online social platform. It had 500,000 users at its peak, although he no longer maintains it due to time limitations.

He says that because his volunteering is self-initiated, his schedule is very flexible and he doesn’t face much burnout, despite spending 20 hours weekly on coding, and 40 hours weekly on school breaks.

“I try and do a lot of things at once, but I kind of like the pressure of doing a lot of things at once,” he said. 

He is currently in the early stages of a community-centred project that he found on an online forum for Singaporean students, r/SGExams, to connect volunteer tutors to tutees who need help with their exams. 

His two previous community projects were self-initiated as well. He came across the first one through his counsellor when he faced family issues, and the second one on Linkedin, when he was browsing through internet for volunteering opportunities.

Previously, he built a website dashboard for Fei Yue Community Services in 2019, which helped them to streamline the process of disadvantaged families collecting food for their monthly food fiesta.

He’s also worked on another project at Code For Singapore, a community-led organisation that uses technology to create projects to help people in 2020 and 2021. 

There, he worked on a platform for isolated elderly to interact more, by having the public ask them questions and having these elders give them advice.

“When you volunteer, you kind of get a new perspective and also make new friends… the most selfish thing you can do is to help other people because the feeling is good, the joy is there,” he said when asked about his motivations.

‘N’ LEVEL RESULTS RELEASE

The Secondary 4 Normal Academic (NA) student is one of the 9,000 students from the NA stream who took the N-Levels this year.

He is also one of the 51.9 per cent of students, from the NA course, who took subjects at the O-Levels, having undergone subject-based banding and choosing English, Combined Science (Physics/Chemistry), Chinese B, and Elementary Mathematics for this level at the end of his Secondary 2 year in the NA course. 

This is a slight increase from last year, when 50.3 per cent of students from NA took such an option. 

Also, this year, 8,955 (or 99.5 per cent) of candidates from the N(A) course have been awarded the GCE N(A)-Level certificate. This is the same percentage as last year, when 9,356 candidates from the N(A) course were awarded their certificates.

HOPES AND DREAMS

Felix said that he hopes to go to a Polytechnic under the Polytechnic Foundation Programme (PFP), which will open applications when the O-Level results are released in January next year.

He plans to go into a course in artificial intelligence, data science or computer engineering, either at Singapore Polytechnic or Ngee Ann Polytechnic through the PFP.

“I think that most of the computer schools… I find that you can learn most of the content online but the AI one and Data science are harder to learn online,” he said.

“Engineering as well… there are some facilities that you may not get access to, like 3d printing, so it’s better to go to a poly than to learn online,” he added.

His N-Level results are in-line with his goal of a total of seven points for admissions to the PFP — two points from his N-Levels, and five points from his O-Levels.

"I feel relieved to know that I have met my target for the two N-Level subjects...I am glad that my efforts over the years have paid off," he said.

"However, I still need to wait for my O-level results for my other subjects to be released before I can stop worrying," he added.