37 
Regardless of which app you’re using on your phone, you probably never give a thought to who wrote the code behind it. If pushed, you’d probably guess that it was written by a recent graduate or established programmer—and not one of a new wave of childhood developers.
The Wall Street Journal has a wonderful piece about the flock of young teenagers that are building apps, concentrating on the fact that Apple dropped the age restriction at last week’s WWDC so that kids as young as 13 could turn up to the conference. From the journal:
“Paul Dunahoo went on a business trip to San Francisco last week, where he attended technical sessions at Apple Inc.’s developer conference, networked with other programmers and received feedback from Apple engineers on his six productivity apps.
“Then, Mr. Dunahoo, chief executive of Bread and Butter Software LLC, returned to Connecticut to get ready for the eighth grade.”
In fact, WWDC drew 150 teenage developers to its doors, all chaperoned by their parents. For them, the conference was just the same as for grown ups: they attended the keynote, took part in workshops and classes, and did their fair share of hanging out. Unlike the older attendees, though, they had their own child-friendly lounge—complete with bean bags and Skittles.
Now, a series of tech summer camps across California is bracing itself for its busiest season yet. As the Journal points out, for these young developers its not all about money: most of them do it to explore their interest in technology and learn to code. Admittedly some of them earn thousands through the sale of their apps but then, as one interviewee points out, that sure beats working in an ice cream parlour. [Wall Street Journal]
Image by Olly/Shutterstock
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I know you Young’uns are a bit sketchy on history, but shouldn’t this be “the second coming of the Childhood programmer”. Back in the 80′s there were loads of kids who had the first wave of affordable home computers and turned out many great games and programs for them in their bedrooms. It’s great that Kids are getting into programming, rather than just passively using, their devices again.
I’ve been playing a game in my head for a while trying to guess your age based purely on your comments on Gizmodo. I could probably find you on Google+ but that would be cheating
Physical or mental? Doubt the two match… lmao
And that is exactly how it should be?
And that is exactly how it should be
wow, double post without question mark.
that’s what makes it so difficult!
I’d guess at 41.
And for mental age… 4.1.
Yup my estimate is around the 40 mark too
What margin for error are you including in this estimate?
2 years either way so between 38 and 42, I bet I’m still wrong even with the margin for error though.
Yep, do you want me to tell you?
Yes I do. I think I’m as close as I can get based on Giz posts, you win!
No reply link on your last post, so I am posting here. Born in that great year for English football 1966, I shall be 46 on Friday.
Aww so close! I’ll remember to wish you happy birthday on Friday then, and no sooner
That’s just hurtful
What? That I think you’re 41?
No, that mental age comment.
hahaha.
I’m just saying, you’re a child at heart fella.
No, you are just being a big old meanie and I’m going to tell my mum what you said
I note that you’re not denying either of them though! lmao
Physical age is less inaccurate than Mental age, both are wrong. I have discussed my physical age on Giz before, so it’s no secret.
Well It’s my birthday this week (Friday) so I’ll be another year older soon
While it’s cool that these kids are making apps and developing I see them as potential threats, hell if I made apps they would be a threat right now!
I certain proportion of kids are always going to be into developing, the trouble has been for the last 15-20 years we had no real output for simple little apps – the wants and needs of a game or application were high as were the production costs, hollywood budgets needing to be spent on big teams to make them happen.
Sadly most of this may not last, each year the mobile device market will double in power, most users will then expect the apps to exploit this power, thus the resources to make a highly polished app will also increase, as will the cost, we are seeing the start of this now with 2gb games costing £5+. But I think mobile devices may always have a market for a smart little idea or a simple game – like a time lapse app with bulb ramping or a simple social drinking game.
Another aspect is the tools, back in the day a kid needed to learn source code, today the world is full of GUI tools and game engines that means the learning curve of years becomes months, plus we have vast code repositories and online help and collaboration. You get suck on something today and you google it and find a number of pre-made solutions.
I believe a core knowledge is essential but beyond that why waste time doing things the hard way when there are brilliant tools out there. Web development people seem to me to go against this and would rather work from notepad -_-
Hopefully these kids are coding most of the app themselves and not copy/pasting.