Sophomore Xeon Gutierrez remembers watching his father working on computers as early as four or five years old. It inspired him to learn how computers work.

“I didn’t actually start programing until I was nine or ten years old,” Gutierrez said.

His passion for computers and computer languages has paid off for him this year, landing him an internship and fifth place at a national competition.

Gutierrez moved from Oregon to Austin over the summer. He transferred over to Akins High School and found a natural home in the New Tech Academy’s Computer Programming Major. He is learning Python and HTML/CSS, which are computer languages at school, but he has taught himself VB.Net, C# and VBS.

“He is actually very talented when it comes to programing,” computer science teacher Elizabeth Phillips said. “I found out about that pretty early in the school year. He would answer questions very well and I feel like he might even know more than me he is just a very brilliant person.”

Gutierrez is also a member of the Akins chapter of Business Professionals of America, which is lead by teachers Stuart Berkowitz and Troy Golba. At the regional competition he placed in the top five, advancing to the state competition in Dallas. Gutierrez placed second place at the state competition and moved on to competing on at the national BPA competition in California, where he took fifth place.

“He’s very focused on programing and computer science,” Berkowitz said. “It’s like he doesn’t just do it for a class; he does it because he really enjoys it and it’s like his passion.”

This semester Akins offered a new internship that gives students the opportunity to gain industry-based learning with a cooperating partner called the Employee Retirement System, which is the state agency that oversees state employee retirement plans. Gutierrez was selected along with one other New Tech student for the internship in a three step process.

“We asked teachers to recommend students who would benefit and are ready to be at an internship on their own,” said Regina McGough, New Tech Academy Coordinator. “Xeon was nominated. We then went to visit the internship and he liked what he saw. Finally, we had an application and he completed it and was selected.”

He said he hopes to create his own software company one day.

“Me and my friends started our own computer language called Lango it’s going to be complex so you can just use English to tell a computer what to do,” he said.