At the end of last year, we reported three talented teenagers in the science and technology field, including Thomas Suarez, a sixth-grade iOS developer. At that time, he had developed five iOS applications, A company, CarrotCorp, was set up to impress you, perhaps the speech he gave at the TED podium. Such young stories can always attract a lot of attention, and such stories may become more and more in the future, because the trend of younger developers is becoming increasingly fierce. So do you want your child to be a developer?
The age limit for participants in this year's WWDC has been reduced to 13 years old. Apple provides 150 teenagers with free WWDC admission tickets (worth $1599) and allows parents to accompany them. Among the 5000 participants in this WWDC, the proportion of students accounts for more than 2%. Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing director, talked about the reason in an interview last week:
We thought it would be enough to invite students aged 18 and above, but we will always receive emails from students aged 14, 15, and 16 after the developer conference. They will say in the email how many software they have installed in the App Store, and often ask the question "Can I attend the developer conference.
This shows that the tide of mobile app development in the current era has attracted a considerable number of young people. In their view, developing apps is not just one of the ways to earn pocket money, it is still a way to make yourself succeed as soon as possible.
Paul Dunahoo is an outstanding representative of several hundred young developers in WWDC. The self-developed iOS teenager is already the managing director of Bread and Butter Software LLC. He claims that he has downloaded nearly 2 million applications he has developed, he also earned nearly $8000 in revenue. Similar figures include 17-year-old Andrew Rosenblum, who has also earned thousands of dollars from a self-developed dice game and 99-cent mathematical applications.
Although the proportion of young developers is still relatively low, as the popularity of smart mobile devices is getting wider and faster, the time for younger users to access these devices is getting faster and faster. The early use of smartphones can be seen everywhere for children. The eight-year-old child of a relative has used the latest iPhone and may even laugh at the old iPhone.
As the base of Low-age users of smart mobile devices increases, the ratio of users to developers increases accordingly. The evolution of such trends is naturally subject to the background of today's information explosion. Now, finding a iOS, Android, and Windows Phone development tutorial on the Internet is not difficult to get started. It can be said that the development of mobile applications is relatively low, and the emerging "Application Development Training Camp" and other institutions are also one of the convenient ways to enter the application development field.
The trend of younger developers may, on the one hand, lead to more young entrepreneurs. The plasticity and unlimited imagination of young people may give them unlimited potential. However, on the other hand, it is inevitable that some young people who do not know how to drop out of school and start their own businesses will not be ignorant, to be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
We cannot judge whether this trend is beneficial or not, and the trend cannot be easily changed. The developer path can guide you to the bright future or the abyss. This is a critical issue for teenagers who are in critical periods of life.