They say big things come in small sizes and that is true for Anvitha Vijay too.
Anvitha Vijay, a 9-year-old girl of Indian origin who develops educational apps for children, was one of the youngest participants selected by Apple to attend WWDC 2016 in San Francisco.
Vijay is attending the annual WWDC event this year as part of Apple's scholarship program, which gives free tickets to developers around the world who help create apps for Apple devices. The girl had applied online for the scholarship. This event is a huge opportunity for developers and coders around the world, and attending it in person was a lifelong dream for Anvitha Vijay.
Now he dreams of meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook in person. "It's my dream to go to WWDC and meet Tim Cook," he said.
She has already built two iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad. Of this year’s 350 participants, 120 are students under the age of 18, according to Fortune, adding that the number of women applying for scholarships tripled this year, while 22 percent of scholarship winners are women, an increase from the previous year.
Vijay, who lives with her parents in Melbourne, Australia, realized at the age of seven that her piggy bank didn’t have enough money to hire a developer to build her an app. So she decided to teach herself how to code. Vijay spent a year watching free coding courses on YouTube and online, and learned how to program.
“Coding was quite difficult. But I’m so glad I stuck with it,” she said. Vijay was inspired by her little sister, who was learning how to talk and identify animals. Her “brainchild” was the Smartkin app, which uses sounds and images on cards to teach children 100 different animal names and sounds. She later developed a similar interactive iOS app for children to identify and learn colors.
“The idea for an app involves a lot of hard work. There are so many components to building an app, including prototyping, designing and wireframing, designing user interface, and then coding and testing,” the little girl added. She is already working on her third iOS app. This will help kids her age set goals, Fortune explains.
The WWDC 2016 conference organized by Apple began yesterday and will be held until June 17 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco.
