9 year old kid writes iPhone application

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 06 February 2009, 00:18 IST   |    25 Comments
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Singapore: A nine year old kid from Singapore has done what many of the experienced techies did not even attempt to do. Leaving back crayons and sketch paper, two things a nine year old kid would always prefer, Lim Ding Wen is sketching on a very different canvas - his iPhone. This fourth grade student writes applications for Apple's popular iPhone. His latest, a painting program called Doodle Kids, has been downloaded over 4,000 times from Apple's iTunes store in two weeks, the New Paper reported on Thursday. "I wrote the program for my younger sisters, who like to draw," Lim said. His sisters are aged three and five. Fluent in six programming languages, Lim started using the computer at the age of two. He has since completed about 20 programming projects. Doodle Kids lets iPhone users draw with their fingers by touching the iPhone's touchscreen and then clear the screen by shaking the phone. An avid reader of books on programming, the boy is in the process of writing another iPhone application - a science fiction game called 'Invader Wars'. His father, Lim Thye Chean, a chief technology officer at a local technology firm, also writes iPhone applications. "Every evening we check the statistics emailed to us (by iTunes) to see who has more downloads," he said.