Can undergraduate students build an internal development platform?

Adam Roe, a faculty member at CODE University of Applied Sciences, shares insights from a 2024 experiment in which advanced undergraduate students were tasked with building an internal development platform using open-source tools. The goal was to provide first-year students with a practical, in-house alternative to commercial hosting solutions for deploying their early-stage web projects. Without a definitive technical guide or textbook on platform engineering at the time, students had to navigate the nuances of infrastructure, developer experience, and system design, while translating theory into a functioning platform. Roe reflects on what made the project successful, what proved unexpectedly difficult, and how this experience shaped students’ understanding of platform engineering as both a discipline and a career path. This talk offers a thought-provoking look at how platform engineering concepts can be taught at the undergraduate level, and what it means to apply them in an academic environment. Learn more: https://platformcon.com/sessions/can-undergraduate-students-build-an-internal-development-platform