A fellow junior of mine from Singapore seems to be much more tech-savvy than most of this peers. At age 9, he has the ability to program an iPhone App whereas his peers only knows what an iPhone is and the basics functions it has. Well, Lim Ding Wen spends his free time developing computer applications.
Born in Malaysia but currently living in Singapore, he is fluent in 6 programming languages (Javascript, Actionscript, Applesoft BASIC, GSoft BASIC, Complete Pascal, Orca/Pascal and a little Objective-C) and his first iPhone app is Doodle Kids – a drawing program. This app enables users to paint on the iPhone by using of shapes like triangles, circles, squares made up of random colors and sizes. It was approved by the folks at Apple and surprisingly, it has managed to attract over 4,000 downloads in just two weeks! What an amazing feat!
His father, Mr Lim Thye Chean, 40, the chief technology officer of a tech company, said: ‘He told me it was his wish to learn programming so I decided to teach him the basics.’ Ding Wen quickly mastered BASIC, a programming language, then moved on to learn Pascal, reading up voraciously to improve his skills. The stack of programming books by Ding Wen’s bedside is telling. He eventually successfully wrote the Doodle Kids application in Pascal, then adapted it for the iPhone.
Actually, his main objective of creating Doodle Kids is specifically for for his younger sisters – aged 3 and 5 – who like to draw and “all the kids in the world.” Of course, you might wonder how a 9-Year-Old has the minds to develop an iPhone app which is quite popular? Well, probably he has the talent in it and guess what – he is probably the world youngest Apple IIGS programmer and iPhone developer.