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This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication - Western Union memo, 1876
Nine-year old writes iPhone applications
Nibble
Whiz kid has to have a hobby
Thursday, 5 February 2009, 13:57
A NINE-YEAR-OLD whiz-kid Lim Ding Wen, from Singapore, has a hobby of writing software for the iPhone.
His latest effort, a painting program called Doodle Kids, has been downloaded over 4,000 times from Apple's iTunes store in two weeks.
Fluent in six programming languages, Lim started using the computer at the age of two. He has since completed about 20 programming projects while most of his peers are climbing trees and hanging cats by their ears from washing lines. µ
L'Inq
Reuters
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Who does that??
I could crank out programs in Basic (ugh), Pascal, C, and x86 assember before I turned 10. And back then (*gets out cane*) there was none of the easy framework stuff. It was int 21h or Win16 APIs all the way. Admittedly, I didn't actually manage to sell anything until I was 12 ...
While I'm a few standard deviations off the mean, I know a couple other people who also were coding before 10, so it can't be that unusual. Especially nowadays when computers, software, and documentation is way more available.
How about coding all the mentioned langs (Basic, ugh, I agree), Pascal, Assembler (x86 and 6502), on illegally cloned PCs (and Apple II's for the record), without ANY documentation (just by looking on reverse-engineered code)?
And by no means of selling anything.
That was behind the Iron Curtain back then. Poor us.
That's so unfair, when I was 9, I couldn't even afford an Iphone!
Oh, we used to dream of havin' BASIC or assembler. We used to have to flip individual bits wit' tongue.
When i was 6 i decided that coding with my fingers just wasnt as fast as using my feet, thats why they now call me the big hairy toe'd coder(the singing was just a sideline that took off.)
I soon grew out of programming though after i wrote the seminal classic 'sellotape dispensor simulator 2.' After the immense success i decided that i should pursue other interests which included leaving the house more.
But i still think this clever kids acheivements should be recognized quickly before he goes off the rails!
Heroes in a half shell.