On Oct 24th, the 2nd Global Programmers' Festival put China's top 10 young programmers under the international spotlight in Xi'an, Shaanxi province.

They received their National Top 10 New Leading Programmer Talent awards from Wang Yongkang, Party secretary of Xi'an, and officials from the China Information Technology Industry Federation.

The award ceremony takes place on Oct 24. [Photo/xiancn.com]

Launched on Aug 15, the event aimed to find and honor the programming role models who showcased outstanding achievements in technical breakthroughs or development modes.

The search attracted this interest of a large number of software professionals and amateur coders from across China, with many of the candidates come from unicorn or gazelle enterprises. After taking programming skills, social contributions and online voting results into consideration, the panel of judges selected the country's top 10 new leading programmers, whose names are as follows:

Mei Xiaolu, founder of Orbbec; Lan Xianghui, co-founder and general manager of YeahMobi; Xu Chiheng, co-founder of SenseTime; Li Donghai, CTO and deputy general manager of Legal Intelligence; Ke Yan, co-founder and CTO of Clobotics; Liu Deli, director of R&D management at Huitongda; Zhang Yu, R&D director of Ksyun, part of Kingsoft Corp; Cao Guojun, software engineer and R&D manager of YHGlobal; Jian Xiaoyun, big data director at Hengtian Soft; and Zhu Pinpin, founder and CEO of iBot Co.

In the following interviews, these role models talk about how they became programmers and what it takes to follow in their footsteps.

The exterior of the 2nd Global Programmers' Festival. [Photo/xiancn.com]

Opening ceremony of the 2nd Global Programmers' Festival in Xi'an, Shaanxi province. [Photo/xiancn.com]