My father worked night shifts as a software engineer. I’d wake up at 2 AM sometimes and see him still coding.
Aryan Sharma grew up watching his father come home exhausted, talking about deployments and deadlines and bugs that kept him up all night. Most kids would see the exhaustion and think “never doing that.”
Aryan saw someone creating things that mattered enough to lose sleep over.
When college decision time came, his parents had simple expectations. Get an engineering degree. Get a stable job. Keep it simple. But Aryan had researched Kalvium. He wanted to start working on projects from the first year. His parents didn’t understand. “Your father did regular engineering. Why do you need something different?” It took weeks to convince them.
The First Week Reality
Aryan walked into Kalvium at LPU thinking he had an advantage. He’d taught himself to code, made small projects, and understood the basics. That advantage lasted about three days.
Six days a week, 9 AM to 6 PM, professional environment from day one. “I expected it to be intense,” he admits now. “But there’s a difference between expecting intensity and living inside it every single day.”
The shocking part wasn’t the schedule. It was realizing that all his self-taught coding had barely scratched the surface. Working alone on a small project is completely different from creating a working product with 33 other people whose code has to integrate with yours perfectly.
When Problems Became Obsessions
Four weeks in, the batch was creating their first major project together, a campus food discovery platform. Aryan worked on the front end, but he didn’t stop there. He’d notice friction in how the team worked and just create solutions. Small tools. A bot that split people into groups. Utilities that made collaboration smoother.
“I realized I wasn’t just learning to code,” Aryan says. “I was learning to see problems everywhere and think ‘I could fix that.’” And once that switch flipped, he couldn’t turn it off.
He got frustrated watching sports highlights that missed the best moments, so he created a Python tool that automatically edits videos using AI. Tested it on tennis matches, refined it, made it work.
He got tired of waiting for backend teams to finish their APIs, so he created a tool that generates mock APIs instantly. Added a “chaos mode” that randomly introduces errors. Other developers started using it.
He watched people waste afternoons setting up development environments, so he created an AI tool that generates installation scripts automatically. One-click setup. Problem solved.
These projects weren’t assigned. Nobody graded them. Aryan made them because he saw friction and got curious about whether he could solve it. Each one taught him how to think about what people actually need, not just what technology can do.
The Internship That Changed Everything
At Woolly Farms, a sustainable agriculture startup, Aryan spent eight months working on features that farmers depended on. Your code directly affects someone’s livelihood. “Good enough and working” beats “perfect but late” every time. “I learned more in those first two weeks than entire semesters,” he says, not because the work was harder, but because it mattered differently.
By the time he landed at Flexera, Aryan had developed something most engineering students never get: product instinct. The ability to see what needs to exist and make it happen.
Who Should Consider This
I would not recommend Kalvium to someone who’s not passionate about computer science. Because it’s that passion that drives you forward. This is rigorous. It demands a lot. It needs that internal drive.
What I really appreciate about this place is the feedback system. Each piece of feedback actually matters. If something can bring constructive change, it gets priority. We have the power to speak. Our voices get heard. If feedback is good and makes sense for the institution, it gets implemented right there. That’s rare, and it makes you feel like you’re part of building something, not just going through it.
When I look back at where I started versus where I am now, the growth has been real. And honestly, it’s just the beginning.
The Moment His Father Saw It
One night during an internship, Aryan was working late. His father walked into his room, stood there quietly, then said: “You look like me 20 years ago.” He smiled. Then added quietly: “Except you’re learning this now, not years into your career after making expensive mistakes.”
His parents stopped being skeptical. They’d watched their son transform from someone who wanted to code into someone who sees problems and creates solutions that people actually use.
The Difference
Aryan doesn’t regret those late nights. He was becoming the version of himself his father would recognize and respect. Someone who doesn’t wait for permission. Someone who sees friction and creates solutions.
Three years later, he looks back at the kid who watched his father code at 2 AM and thought “I want to do that someday.” That kid became someone who does exactly that, right now. Someone his father is proud of. Someone he’s proud to be.
The transformation didn’t happen through talent or luck. It happened through relentless curiosity, through seeing problems worth solving and creating solutions consistently.
Those nights spent creating weren’t wasted. Those were the nights that turned someone learning to code into someone who makes products people need.
What This Means
For students choosing their path, Aryan’s story shows what becomes possible when curiosity drives learning. When you stop consuming tutorials and start creating solutions. When you develop the instinct to see problems worth solving, not just assignments worth completing.
Those 2 AM coding sessions Aryan watched as a kid? They’re his now. By choice.
Aryan Sharma is in his final year at Kalvium’s program at Lovely Professional University, graduating in 2026. He currently works as an Engineering Intern at Flexera. His transformation from watching his father code to owning products happened through relentless curiosity over three years.