Vijay has already made apps for Apple devices.
AB Wire
A 9-year-old Indian-origin girl from Australia is the cynosure of all eyes and a star attraction, as she’s the youngest attendee at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, California. Apple invited her, impressed by Anvitha Vijay’s tech skills – she has developed some apps for Apple products, iPhone and iPad.
Vijay had a dream of building a mobile app, when she just seven years old. With only $130 in her piggy bank (which took her entire lifetime to collect), she realized that she didn’t have enough money to pay a developer to build the app for her. So she spent a year watching free coding tutorials on YouTube and the web, and learned how to program, reported Fortune.
“Coding was so challenging,” Vijay said, now two years older. “But I’m so glad I stuck with it.”
Vijay is attending WWDC as part of Apple’s scholarship program, which gives hundreds of free tickets to developers from around the world who are creating apps for Apple devices. This year’s group of recipients saw the most winners under the age of 18, and a more diverse crowd than years past. Out of 350 recipients, 120 of the lucky winners are students under the age of 18. Submissions increased by 215% more than doubled from organizations focused on science, technology, engineering, and math.
The number of women who applied for the scholarship tripled this year, and this year, 22% of scholarship winners are women, which is an increase from last year, reported Fortune.
For Vijay, developing apps is about empowering children. Vijay’s apps were inspired by her toddler sister, who was learning how to talk and identify animals. Her brainchild was the Smartkins Animals app, which uses sounds, and flashcards to help teach children 100 different animals’ names and sounds. She then developed another similar interactive iOS app for children to help them learn colors.
When describing the process of developing an iOS app, Vijay sounds more like a programmer than a nine year old. “Turning an idea for an app involves a lot of hard work,” Vijay explained. “There are so many components to building an app, including prototyping, design and wirreframing, user interface design and then coding and testing.”
She’s already working on her next app, which wants to help kids her own age with setting goals.
Vijay applied for a scholarship for WWDC by applying online. As for her trip to WWDC, Vijay will travel thousands of miles from her hometown in Melbourne, Australia to the Bay Area with her parents and sister.
“It’s my dream to go to WWDC and meet Tim Cook,” Vjay said.
1 Comment
thumbs up girl!u r doing great