15-year-old male student makes his own web browser and virtual assistant in Vietnam

Learning programming from kindergarten, Nguyen Anh Khoa has developed a web browser with integrated virtual assistant to recognize Vietnamese language and dozens of "trendy" features in Vietnam.

KT Browser , browser "made in Vietnam" is being handed over by the online community over the past few days. Few know this versatile web browser was developed by a 10th grader living in a small town in Kon Tum. The project started 6 years ago, when the author was still in elementary school.

Talking to PV, Nguyen Anh Khoa, author of KT Browser , admitted to making "from A-Z" to produce a browser for Vietnamese people, integrating "toxic" features like night mode, Virtual assistant, automatic ad blocking, free virtual private network VPN, . Even the Google Material-style flat interface is also designed by Khoa.

According to Anh Khoa, KT Browser takes advantage of open source Chromium (currently used by Google Chrome, Coc Coc, .), Gecko of Firefox and Trident of Internet Explorer. However, the KT Browser code is still written by the Department itself and tries to ensure that these kernels are well compatible, not copying the prototypes from the above browsers. Users can also choose to switch between these three cores depending on the purpose of use.

KT Browser of Nguyen Anh Khoa has undergone 5 versions and is being perfected and corrected every day.

Currently, KT Browser is still in the development phase and there are still many issues to overcome."Version 6.0 is expected to be released at the end of July, which will bring a smarter virtual assistant, faster browsing speed and easier installation ," revealed 10th grade high school student Nguyen Tat Thanh.

Get familiar with programming languages ​​soon

Born and raised in Kon Tum, in a family where both parents are teachers of mathematics, Nguyen Anh Khoa soon formed logical thinking and programming passion. Khoa told me that, in one of the comic books in the bookcase, I accidentally found his father's "Pascal self-study syllabus" . Kindergarten boy was immediately attracted to this language.

In grade 3, Anh Khoa started to get acquainted with Visual Basic, a newer programming language. In 2010, Anh Khoa started to study VB.NET, C # and C ++ by itself. While in grade 5, Khoa began to think about creating the first web browser for Vietnamese people, in the context of "foreign " browsers like Chrome and Firefox.

"Most browsers currently do not incorporate features for Vietnamese people, usually because users install additional extensions themselves," Nguyen Anh Khoa said of the idea of ​​making KT Browser. If calculated from "pregnancy" , KT Browser of Khoa appeared before Coc Coc (formerly known as Chrome +).

Get "rock bricks" and raise the project with bonuses

"Bad feedback is better than good," Anh Khoa did not hide about the launch days of KT Browser on the Internet. He thinks that users often "stoned" on the unfinished building features. With the complete features, KT Browser receives positive feedback from the community.

Nguyen Anh Khoa said that he could only sleep 4-5 hours a day.The remaining time to go to school and do software.(Photo: Character provided).

However, "stone tiles" from testers are not the biggest problem for Anh Khoa when developing this product. The 10th grader confessed that the biggest difficulty lies in funding. "I don't understand why it was possible to get parents a million VND to buy a server (server) at that time. At that time my parents didn't believe I could do a web browser , " Khoa said.

In order to maintain this service, the 15-year-old programmer must spend VND 500,000 per year for domain names and one million to "feed" the server."I bring the virtual assistant software Cena to the National Science and Technology Innovation Exam 2016 to receive the second prize, the prize of VND 1.5 million so I have" capital "maintained for the project".

As for the virtual assistant Cena , this tool can be run on Android smartphones, but because Khoa has no budget to pay for the solution provider, this product is only available on KT Browser.

Talking to PV, Nguyen Anh Khoa said his next product will be a pure Vietnamese operating system based on cloud computing, running on every device. "I wish I had a new laptop to work better," Khoa said.