The fourth semester of Exploring PaaS for Dynamic Online Ventures, the joint course offered by the University of Szeged and platformOS, has successfully come to an end. Once again students joined to explore how modern digital products and business ideas can be built on a flexible Platform as a Service (PaaS).
One of the most exciting aspects of this semester was the diversity of the participants. The class included both junior students taking some of their first steps in web development and more advanced students who already had experience with software development and digital product creation. This variety created a dynamic learning environment where students could approach challenges from different perspectives and learn from one another's experiences.
Throughout the semester, students worked closely with the platformOS team, gaining hands-on experience with the platform and its capabilities. During the development sessions, platformOS CTO Maciej Krajowski paid special attention to helping students get the most out of the course, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their starting point, could continue progressing and exploring new possibilities.
As in previous semesters, the course offered not only a focus on technology and the SDLC, but also on entrepreneurial thinking. Students were encouraged to think like founders, product creators, and problem-solvers: identifying opportunities, validating ideas, and exploring how platformOS could help transform concepts into working digital products.
The semester concluded with final presentations in which students showcased their business ideas and demonstrated how they would build and develop them using platformOS. The presentations highlighted not only technical progress but also creativity, product thinking, and the ability to turn ideas into tangible solutions.
What stood out this year was how differently students chose to explore the platform.
Some of the students only explored developing, stepping to a completely unchartered area, while others focused on building a strong technical foundation, learning how platformOS simplifies application development through its built-in capabilities. However there were a few of them who pushed the platform in unexpected directions, demonstrating just how versatile a modern PaaS can be.
A recurring theme across many projects was the realization that platformOS allows developers to spend less time assembling infrastructure and more time creating value. With features such as authentication, user management, data modeling, APIs, hosting, and real-time communication available within a single platform, students could focus on product design, business logic, and user experience rather than stitching together multiple tools and services.
As students became more confident using the platform, their mindset gradually shifted from learning a technology to building a product.
One of the most remarkable examples came from students Ádám and Roland.
When Roland enrolled in the course, he was looking for a practical learning experience that would go beyond theory and provide an opportunity to build real, scalable web products. Although he had previous experience with traditional web technologies, platformOS was his first encounter with a comprehensive all-in-one PaaS solution.
"The most important realization for me was how much the right toolkit can accelerate development," Roland explains. "When the platform, modern development tools, and AI assistants work together, you can move forward at an incredible pace."
What began as a technical exercise gradually evolved into something much more ambitious. As the project developed, the team started asking a different question: instead of simply building a website, what if they built something they would genuinely want to use themselves?
That shift in perspective changed everything.
Inspired by the browser-based games they enjoyed as kids, Ádám and Roland created Sprout & Sprite, a browser-based multiplayer gaming portal designed to bring the simplicity and accessibility of classic web games into a modern environment.
The project became a perfect example of how platformOS can support far more than traditional business applications.
Using platformOS, the team implemented user registration, authentication, profiles, data storage, match history management, GraphQL APIs, and real-time multiplayer synchronization. One of the biggest technical challenges involved creating a responsive online multiplayer experience with minimal latency. The breakthrough came when the students discovered platformOS's native WebSocket capabilities, which allowed them to implement real-time communication efficiently and create a significantly smoother gameplay experience.
As their ideas grew, so did their awareness of the depth and breadth of the enablement offered by platformOS.
What started as a web development project evolved into a fully functioning multiplayer experience where players can simply open a browser, join a game, and immediately compete against one another in real time: without installations, launchers, or complicated setup processes.
The final presentations also demonstrated that there is no single outcome for students participating in the course.
Some students discovered new technical interests and strengths. One participant, while developing a freelance marketplace concept similar to Fiverr, became deeply interested in user experience design and created an impressive UX research and design process around the project.
Others discovered new approaches to entrepreneurship and product development.
And some, like Ádám and Roland, found themselves continuing to develop their projects even after the study period of the semester officially ended.
Perhaps the most telling sign of success is that for these students, the biggest challenge is no longer generating ideas, but deciding which ideas to build next. As Ádám explains, new opportunities and features continue to emerge, making prioritization and roadmap planning the next stage of the journey.
One of the key lessons from this semester is that modern cloud platforms have fundamentally changed how digital products are created.
Instead of spending weeks or months assembling infrastructure and integrating separate services, developers can start with a platform that already provides a rich set of capabilities out of the box. This allows them to focus on solving problems, testing ideas, refining user experiences, and creating products that deliver real value.
For business owners, entrepreneurs, and development teams, this means shorter paths from concept to validation. For students, it means gaining hands-on experience with the same product-building mindset they will encounter in modern technology companies.
And for many participants, it means discovering that ambitious ideas may be much more achievable than they initially imagined.
If you've been following our university partnership series, you may also enjoy reading how the course has helped students launch their careers, including one participant's journey from university student to intern and some interns eventually becoming junior developers.
After four successful semesters, one thing has become clear: when students are given access to modern tools, expert mentorship, and the freedom to experiment, remarkable things can happen.
Some participants leave the course with new technical skills. Some discover new career opportunities. And some leave with a product they simply can't stop working on.
This semester's projects showed that platformOS is more than a development platform: it is an environment where ideas can be explored, tested, and transformed into real products, leveraging AI coding, but with the real-world guardrails, security and scalability of a PaaS. Whether students are building business applications, marketplaces, community platforms, or even multiplayer games, the possibilities are limited only by their imagination.
And if the enthusiasm of students like Ádám and Roland is any indication, some of the most exciting developments may happen long after the semester ends.
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