Guest post by Lim Ding Wen, a fourth grader in Singapore, has taken up writing applications for Apple’s all-popular iPhone, his latest of which is called “Doodle Kids,” aptly named for its doodling or painting capabilities. He began his computer experience at the ripe age of two and has a good twenty programming projects under his belt. He is fluent in six programming languages. His father also writes iPhone apps, and they often compare statistics to see whose is more popular– as it is, Lim’s app has over 4,000 downloads. Do you think perhaps we could be calling him “King Ding” in thirty years when he’s taken over the digital world?
While I applaud his efforts, talent, and ability to somehow get the attention of the mainstream press, I and my friends where writing programs at age 9, too – and that was 20 years ago when it wasn’t cool. Maybe I’m just getting old and grumpy, but I always feel a bit slighted by mainstream articles that lionize a kid for doing the same things I had done at his/her age many years earlier – but was ridiculed or ignored at the time. (Get off my lawn!)
I must also be getting old and grumpy… I totally agree with you. What else is new people? Ten-year-old found experimenting with chemistry set?
Aaaaaaaaaaanyway… what I want to know is: what languages?
Just curious…
Not to mock the kid, but so many times I see people pass off using HTML as being a programmer. Using HTML does not make one a programmer by any stretch of the imagination.
Also, knowing a language does not make one a capable user of it; heck, I could claim I know equal number but I’m not going to claim that my COBOL programming skills is as good as an old time mainframe programmer.
Btw Adam S, fix the same quoting, its crap; one should be able to use embedded quoting without the whole thing going pear shaped.
Edited 2009-02-06 09:50 UTC
According to http://virtualgs.larwe.com/Virtual_GS/Lim_Ding_Wen.html:
I too get a bit frustrated with people like this. I was writing C at 10, and I never received any praise for it until I got to uni and my classmates went to me for help when they didn’t understand something. It’s a different world today though… especially considering when I was 10 no one had heard of the internet
Edited 2009-02-08 03:56 UTC
Thanks for the info! My ancient crooked fingers were too lazy to look that up myself…
Now we can finally start the “scripting languages are not programming languages” flame war…
-zsejk
agreed, i to grew up on Sinclair Spectrums and BBC Micro’s which practically pushed you into doing some programming.
How about that? Not many pupil speak fluently in their mother’s tongue at that age…
I knew how to put a 5 1/4″ disk in our Commodore 64 system – when I was younger than a year old and still only crawling. Do you consider that “computer experience”? I don’t…
I was writing 6502 at 8 and 68000 by the age of 10.
So were many others that are now in their mid 30’s, this kid is nothing out of the ordinary.
Good for you! And I had no chance to write any apps at the age of 10. But if I look at the situation ex post, I am very happy about it…
Perhaps he just needs to get out more…
Sure, on his YouTube channel, in hi5, Facebook or any other social networking site. But I mean friends he can play with offline? Maybe 4 friends? 1? Developing apps consumes a lot of time just like playing WoW. I do not think practicing bot activities extensively is good for the (physical AND social) development of a child.
There’s a very big difference between writing BASIC code on your 6502 BBC and figuring out how xCode works and writing onjective C.
Nah, I don’t think so. It’s relatively easy to write crappy Objective-C code copy-pasted from samples and to push the “Build & Run” button. BASIC had it’s own oddities and strange things to learn – especially if you got into PEEK and POKE and the like. Objective-C is really no different. You can code in it without really understanding everything about it – same as any language.
I’m not saying this kid doesn’t understand at least some of what he’s doing; I’m sure he’s pretty bright. I’m just saying that this really isn’t novel. I was building electronic circuits, mixing chemicals with my chemistry set, programming in BASIC (and then later in Pascal and C, etc.) at and before his age. I even repeatedly took apart and then reassembled (and yes, they worked afterward) the computers just to learn. Big deal. He’s just a typical 9 year old geek who is growing up surrounded by a different set of starting point technologies. If I had Objective-C and an iPhone back then, I’d no doubt have been programming for it when I was 9, too.
If he was my kid, I’d be very proud of him. But to have even minor fame for this on an international stage is just plain silly.
Edited 2009-02-06 19:56 UTC
There’s an even bigger difference coding 6502 machine code on your C64 and pointing and on XCode too!
Time to get the old breadbox and Action Replay cartridge out for a trip down memory lane methinks!
I think you guys are looking at this the wrong way. Yes, he’s a kid… and yes, he’s doing things that a good number of us were doing at his age.
However…
In a world where High School graduates can’t even formulate complete sentences, and where we constantly develope new ways to reward mediocrity… I’m glad a kid like this gets some fair publicity. Who knows—it might actually inspire a few turds to get off their MySpace page for a few minutes and learn something useful.
Kudos to expanding geekdom!
What’s so geeky about writing iPhone apps? Isn’t it a bit off a sellout?