"I started coding when I was 6"
10-year-old app developer Yuma Soerianto has been praised by Apple CEO Tim Cook.
The young whizz kid began coding at the age of 6 and has since caught the attention of leading technology giant Apple.
Soerianto was invited to WWDC free of charge as part of Apple’s Scholarship program, which invites young students to attend the event to further inspire them to become tech leaders. Soerianto was even praised by CEO Tim Cook on stage.
“I can’t wait to see what he’s going to accomplish next,” said Cook.
The Melbourne born coding genius is the second young student to be invited to WWDC, following 9-year-old Avitha Vijay last year. Apple usually invites teenagers.
Soerianto currently has five apps in the App Store and plans to create even more in the future.
“I only learned coding (the skill to make apps) from online,” he says. “I never had the chance to talk to someone who could teach me coding, so it’s a privilege to be here and learn from someone I can talk to.”
He also runs his own YouTube channel, Anyone Can Code, which teaches people how to enter the coding industry. Soeriento’s apps are accredited to his dad, Henri, who is also a designer and app developer, due to Apple’s rules requiring developers to be of a certain legal age.
Soeriento’s apps include Weather Duck, which features a duck giving the weather report and Kid Calculator, which features his own voice reading out numbers.
The 10-year-old claims that his his school “enough challenges to satisfy [him]”, so he began coding due to an interest in “how things worked, how apps worked“.
Dad Hendri says Yuma does most of the work on the apps himself. “He codes the apps and decides on the layouts and functionalities.”
“I give him some of the images to be used in the apps. I want him to focus on the fun programming part, and not be discouraged by doing too many tasks!”