Apple WWDC 2016: five things to watch for
With Siri now open to third-party developers, expect to hear a lot more from the virtual assistant as it expands to Mac and Apple TV.
PT1M4S 620 349Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference brings together app developers from all walks of life, and the youngest to make the trip to San Francisco this year was Anvitha Vijay, a grade four student from Mount View Primary School in Melbourne.
Anvitha, now nine, began coding at the age of seven. She wanted to make an app that would help her younger sister – then two – to identify animals. Two years later Smartkins Animals, an educational app aimed at kids aged five and under, made it into Apple's App Store. The iOS app was good enough to win her one of 350 Apple scholarships for young coders to attend WWDC. She was one of eight in Australia.
"I'm learning a lot already, there's so many smart people to talk to," she told Fairfax from the conference.
Anvitha Vijay last year in Melbourne. Photo: Eddie Jim
"San Francisco is great – the weather is even weirder than Melbourne's!"
Anvitha began teaching herself to code by watching YouTube videos. She prototyped her app in Photoshop before using the design app Sketch to nail the interface. Once she was happy with how the app looked, she began coding in Xcode, Apple's iOS development environment.
The difficulty wasn't the code itself, but pulling off the execution of the app, Anvitha said. She wasn't happy with the first incarnation, which she described as too "feature heavy". It needed to be simplified before her sister could really enjoy it.
Anvitha in San Francisco this week. Photo: Peter Wells
"There were just too many screens and menus, it was too confusing," she said.
After some refinement, the app was simple enough for her sister to use independently and Anvitha launched it on the App Store. Since then it has been downloaded a few hundred times, she said.
Anvitha's already well into her next project. Called GoalsHi, it will focus on empowering kids her age to build their confidence in the classroom.
A snapshot of Anvitha's app on iPad. Photo: Apple
Anvitha used Apple's Swift coding language to develop the second app, and is looking forward to getting her hands on Swift Playground, Apple's new app announced this morning, which teaches children to code.
"It looks really fun and something I could use to teach my friends at school to code," she said.
"I've tried to teach them Xcode, but they think it looks too difficult."
Anvitha's app helps young children learn animal names. Photo: Apple
In a perfect world, she'd like Apple to bring Xcode to the iPad.
"Coding with a touch interface would be so much easier," she said.
While this writer can fathom a seven-year-old teaching herself to code via YouTube, I had to ask Anvitha if she thought there was any hope for me – an ancient 38 year old – to learn how to code. She was gracious in her reply: "Yeah, if you have the passion and drive, I'm sure you could do it. You just need a good idea."
The article has been updated with the correct name of Anvitha's second app, GoalsHi.
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