 Daylife/Reuters Pictures
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Here’s a story that gives new meaning to the term Apple fanboy. A 9-year-old youngster from Singapore, prompted by his younger sisters’ love of drawing, created an application for the iPhone called Doodle Kids. Budding artists create pictures by dragging a finger across the screen and then shake the phone to return to a blank canvas.
Fourth-grade protege Lim Ding Wen has been using computers since he was two and already knows six programming languages. Doodle Kids might be his first app in the App Store, but it won’t be his last. Wen is already working on a sci-fi action game for the iPhone called Invader Wars.
Of course, the story of a 9-year-old whiz kid is great to hear, but it also illustrates a larger point about the development process of iPhone apps. It’s clear that we’ve gotten to a point where technology is becoming less mystical and more approachable.
A mere decade ago, computers themselves were still viewed as elusive gadgets and programming was left to people with only the highest levels of geekery in their bloodstream. Now we have kids programming smartphones before they’re old enough to drive a car.
Lots of coverage for this tale around the geek side of the Web. I thought I’d include this version because [1] Lisa Hoover makes an appropriate point about simplified programming requirements and [2] the fact her own 9-year-old is interested in doing the same.
Bravo!
yawn…
“A mere decade ago, computers themselves were still viewed as elusive gadgets and programming was left to people with only the highest levels of geekery in their bloodstream.”
What clueless idiot wrote this? A decade ago you could walk into grade school classrooms and watch the kids write working programs…
Yes, yawn.
More yawn. I took my first Apple BASIC computer programming class thirty years ago. I programmed a game in my Casio scientific calculator in 9th grade because I was bored in science class, in the mid 1980s.
There have been stories about a computer whiz kid every 5 years as if it is something that is new…
If programming has become so ubiquitous…how come there are less computer science graduates now that in the year 2000?
Pretty typical American geek scorecard:
egregious = 3
parochial = 1
#4,
Because you don’t need a degree to apply for a programming job and be taken seriously anymore. So people get a degree in something else.
Let me retract my previous statement
National Science Foundation Degrees awarded 1966–2006
shows that they have remained relatively flat since 2000 with modest gains.
#6 Bingo.
#6, #8 – Ditto. I switched to Civil Engineering after I realized any sort of programming degree was a waste of time.
And this is why companies outsource jobs, while the kids in this continent are busy sending naked pictures of themselves via phone cam the ones in SE Asia are busy making apps FOR the phones.
Yeah ok, so when he grows up (unless he’s clever enough to start his own company, most aren’t) he’s fast on his way to a low paying high stress job with little or no job security. Just like almost everyone else. My last boss at a programming job told me that development of the software was a value added to help him sell hardware. Quick development with MS visual Dev, Deadlines that are almost impossible to meet, salary job where you get to take your work home with you, customers that are never satisfied and/or too stupid to read the documentation, etc.
If he was my kid I’d make sure he understood that programming as a skill or a hobby is great (I still program my robots). But as a profession, it sucks.
I was writing little programs at that age as well. Big deal.
Had there been an easily programmable machine when I was that age, I would have loved it. Being older than core memory, I had to wait a few more years before ASM on S/360 could handle my 1st app – a graphics layout system for large film for what was then called LSI. Fun years, 1960s.
Anyone remember LSI? Har! This kid should be proud.
what a geeky nerd. or maybe his father is the ghost programmer of this kid. just maybe.
#13 You are old, I got to work with a IBM 360 in the navy, but mostly I had to work with a Univac second generation computer. Those used core memory and full sized transistors – no chips. Nothing like compiling Cobol from punch cards. Thank god for the advance o technology!
11: Or it could be your poor choice of job to take on. I’m in a programming job, I’m paid quite well, been here 2 years I make £45,000 a year (British Pounds) and get recognition for my work along with normal work hours.
#15 Amodedoma.
Cobol? *shudders* I spend an entire year in high school with it..
#15 Amodedoma
#17 Angel H. Wong
Cobol? *shudders violently* I also spent an entire year in a high school wondering what I’d be able to create when finished with the class.
I’d like to know who was responsible for choosing COBOL as the language for a 3-hour vocational school class.