How a Nine-Year-Old Australian Landed a Coveted WWDC Apple Scholarship

[MacRumors]

During Apple's opening keynote address at this week's Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco, CEO Tim Cook gave a shout-out to Anvitha Vijay, the youngest ever developer to attend WWDC.

Aged just nine, Vijay applied for and won one of 350 coveted Apple scholarships to attend the conference's coding and programming sessions, which are typically dominated by high school and college students. According to Fortune, the number of women who applied for Apple's scholarship also tripled this year compared to 2015.

Anvitha Vijay, the 9-year-old developer at WWDC 2016 (Image: USA Today)​

A resident of Melbourne, Australia, Vijay was selected for a scholarship after she created an iOS app called Smartkins Animals, which lets young users have fun exploring the sights and sounds of over 100 animals. Prior to WWDC, the app had been downloaded "a few hundred times".

"It was like a dream to be here and meet so many people," Vijay said, speaking to USA Today. "I've just touched the tip of the iceberg in coding, there's so much to learn."

Vijay, who has Indian heritage, began teaching herself coding skills at the age of seven by watching YouTube instructional videos and using her mum's iPhone (users have to be aged at least 13 to hold an iTunes account). She said she was motivated to make an app using Xcode to teach her younger sister how to identify the names of animals.

"I want to be an innovator, to build things that people will love and benefit from," said Vijay as she handed WWDC attendees her business card, on which reads the motto: "I want to make a difference in people's lives through technology."

Vijay has now progressed to Apple's more advanced Swift programming language to develop a new app she's calling GoalsHi, which aims to give students more confidence in the classroom.

During Apple's WWDC keynote, the company revealed a new educational app called "Swift Playgrounds", which aims to introduce users to a new way to learn to code with Swift on an iPad.

The free app, due to be released with iOS 10 this fall, features custom "learn to code" lessons that focus on crafting visual cues around numeric coding data to slowly introduce kids into the world of coding.

All iPad Air and iPad Pro models will be compatible with the app, as well as iPad mini 2-and-later devices.

Article Link: How a Nine-Year-Old Australian Landed a Coveted WWDC Apple Scholarship

 

[keysofanxiety]

Awwh, this is a great story.

 

[Telos101]

Love this!

 

[AdeFowler]

What a time to be alive!

Amazing to see someone so young with such ambition and drive.

 

[iTom17]

I think it's wonderful to see so many young developers these days. Despite not having any coding experience myself (apart from HTML/CSS) I feel like it's so incredibly important to have so. It helps you to understand how technology works and why it works that way.

This Vijay is gonna have a great future ahead with already this much experience. Companies will stand in lines to offer her a job in Software Engineering. I'm pretty sure about that.

Fantastic how Apple sees this and promotes coding to those who haven't any experience in this field. That new app they announced, Swift Playgrounds is just the perfect example of their commitment to this. I hope even more people will follow and get their hands on coding.

 

[Mums]

Isn't she Indian?

 

[lowendlinux]

Thanks for spotlighting the young dynamo!

 

[Shirasaki]

Australia should be proud for her efforts on winning WWDC scholarship, and her effort of learning coding.
I now know coding is another essential skill just like driving and reading. Too bad I know this when I have already passed 20.

 

[bushido]

good for her. I for one will never understand how one can make sense of coding. It took me 5 tries at my uni to finally pass java class 2 and i still dont understand how i even passed it on my 5th go lol so call me very impressed. it just does not make sense to me, it might as well be all in chinese

 

[OllyW]

Isn't she Indian?

She is from Australia.

 

[Shirasaki]

good for her. I for one will never understand how one can make sense of coding. It took me 5 tries at my uni to finally pass java class 2 and i still dont understand how i even passed it on my 5th go lol so call me very impressed. it just does not make sense to me, it might as well be all in chinese

I am also struggling with my various code related courses, although I realise this is an obstacle I must destroy whatsoever.
I start realising this way too late.

 

[Goldex]

She's just as old as the iPhone!

 

[MH01]

She is from Australia.

During the keynote I thought they said she was Indian. Hence I was also surprised by reading that she is in fact Australian , from an Indian heritage.

Just to clarify she is Austrlian. She was born there. Like myself, while my parents immigrated to Australia , but I'm Australian .

Confusion comes from many articles saying she is Indian-origin , lthat is more important to Apple right now with the politics of moving into India

 

[scottishwildcat]

I think it's wonderful to see so many young developers these days.

Are there really any more now than their used to be? Seems to me like programming was much more accessible in the 80s, when home computers were cheaper than most smartphones are today, and the only user interface they had was a BASIC command prompt. Most of today's top games programmers (especially in the UK) were writing games in their bedrooms in the 80s and 90s as young teenagers, and nearly everybody learned enough to at least mess up the machines running in their local computer store

 

[CFreymarc]

Affirmative Action is written all over this.

 

[philosopherdog]

Wonder why they don't give a shout out to the oldest programmer in the room?! I'm being sarcastic. They should just drop their ageism. That would be a lot more progressive and refreshing.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Affirmative Action is written all over this.

You forgot the /sarc tag so let me add it for you....

Affirmative Action is written all over this. /sarc

But to be clear it's obvious she is an exceptional child and invited based on her accomplishments. I don't know any 7 year kid intellectually curious or disciplined enough to learn code off of YouTube videos so that at 9 they have a published app. It's great she got this opportunity to expand her talent and skills.

 

[Rupanand]

We are so proud of you Anvitha! Keep it up.

 

[yaxomoxay]

I wish her all th best! Great example for all of us

 

[djnigelchung]

edit: offended some users.. deleted

 

[Kaibelf]

Affirmative Action is written all over this.

You really ought to delete your account, Donald. Shame on you.
[doublepost=1466165481][/doublepost]

Wonder why they don't give a shout out to the oldest programmer in the room?! I'm being sarcastic. They should just drop their ageism. That would be a lot more progressive and refreshing.

It's pretty clear that they are highlighting that children are doing coding now more and more.

 

[bstpierre]

Australia should be proud for her efforts on winning WWDC scholarship, and her effort of learning coding.
I now know coding is another essential skill just like driving and reading. Too bad I know this when I have already passed 20.

I have signed up for a week long course in Swift and iOS at the big nerd ranch this fall. I figure I should get this done before I get too old. I am already 53.

 

[Rocketman]

Good for her! Does the scholarship include travel and lodging? She definitely does not have a credit card.

So is Apple going to lower the age from 13 now?

I have written code in Pascal, which MacOS 1.0 was written in, BASIC with several very functional programs still in use today, Xcode a bit, FORTRAN a bit and even, gag, COBOL. Coding is a language, like math or French. Some people just get it.

 

[Gorms]

Australia should be proud for her efforts on winning WWDC scholarship, and her effort of learning coding.
I now know coding is another essential skill just like driving and reading. Too bad I know this when I have already passed 20.

Absolutely never to late to learn! I didn't start learning until my mid-20's, now I'm bang average in loads of languages and pretty good in a couple!

 

[Shirasaki]

Absolutely never to late to learn! I didn't start learning until my mid-20's, now I'm bang average in loads of languages and pretty good in a couple!

Yeah, it would never be late to start learning. Never feel we are safe. Keep ourselves warned at all times.