Immediately after the event of Apple’s keynote at WWDC 2016, young children and teenagers were seen busy clicking selfies and posing for group photos. The group of children included a young nine year old Australian Indian girl, Anvitha Vijay, who was the youngest developer to attend the WWDC. Anvitha is the developer of the Smartkins Animals app that helps small children identify animals. This youngest developer not only received special mention on the stage but also got a chance to fulfill her dream of meeting CEO Tim Cook.
If Apple’s plan is successfu, then next year we will find many nine year old on the stage. At WWDC 2016 the tech giant Tim Cook had announced the launch of the free Swift Playground iPad app. The aim of this app is to create an interest of coding in young children. The demo conducted indicates that it will be very effective in fulfilling its aim. Coding becomes easy due to Swift Playground iPad app. This app comes with programming lessons where students write code to guide onscreen characters through an immersive graphical world, solving puzzles and mastering challenges as they learn core coding concepts. To encourage users to express their creativity and create real programmes there are built in templates.
Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, said that when he was learning to code he wished that Swift Playgrounds was around . He said Swift Playgrounds is the only app of its kind that is both easy enough for students and beginners, yet powerful enough to write real code. It’s an innovative way to bring real coding concepts to life and empower the next generation with the skills they need to express their creativity. It will generate a generation of coders who will be most comfortable working on Apple’s Swift language and than writing other programmes.
