wonderboy tech prodigies: distorted image of app development

[BdR]

It seems to me that "the media" has a distorted and romanticised view on app development.

Stories seem to focus on individual "prodigy" developers with brilliant new ideas that will change the world. While in reality the real success stories seem to come from team efforts putting in a lot of work on usually not-so-unique ideas. Don't get me wrong, I think apps like Wordfeud, Angry Brids, Subway Surfers etc. are great (Wordfeud is based on the age old Scrabble for example) and they deserve all success they get. I'm just saying the media seems to skew these stories by focussing on the wrong things.

The reason I bring it up is this recent example:

The headline: Why Has This College Dropout Been Given $25 Million For His Business?
What is conveniently left out: As you can read here, it's a project onto it's third year, they have lots of employees, university and industry backing, and several professors are also funding and advising the company.

This is just one example but there is a trend of mainly focusing on how young the app developer/startup and leaving out parts that don't fit in this picture of "young prodigy developer". Any thoughts on this..?

[BdR]

But that's just my point, they usually don't inform their readers about the first stages of development. Instead they present the pay off part (i.e. funding, or pay off as in a completed/successful app) as if that's the starting point. Here is another older example, which is a pretty good example I think:

The headline: 9 Year-Old App Developer More Than Just a Feel-Good Story
What is left out: as this article points out Writing an iPhone app not child's play, his father is a software expert who helped out significantly, even creating some BASIC-to-Javascript tools just so his son didn't have to deal with XCode (which back then was on version 3!).

_{(cross forum post btw)}

[erico]

Media, as more main stream it gets, will always do the romantic, distorting and sensational deeds.

Game related articles are better seen on game channels like RPS, Gamasutra and a few others.
It is really a tough thing to talk about game developments when your channel is way off it.
It is like a movie critic that never did a movie in the first place

[matchy]

Is this fake or real?

[erico]

Hahaha nice ! I could not watch till the end though...

[BdR]

Is this fake or real?

A kid who claims to have created a really unique and popular (yet mysteriously nameless) app that's sold to Google for 8.5 million dollars when he was about 8, 9 or 10 years old?

Yeah, that sounds totally believable, not made up at all.. just search "12 year old ferrari truth"

[erico]

I could be tempted to search, but can´t be arsed to do so..hehe could not even watch it 1 minutes long!
There was a post and discussion about that some time ago, I still hold to my old opinion.

[mentalthink]

I think make rich perhaps not, gain a lot of money yes, but not for the app it's good or not... else because the kid have 6 7 8 years old, if you think about the 9x% percent of the population don't have any idea about computers... and then... -Uhh  a very smart kid whit 8 years old... it's a genious whit computers... the app perhaps it's press a button, but are 7 years old, this at todays seems something too much extrange.

I think for this reason it's possible a kid gain a lot of money, you can do excellents app, but not it's the same situation

[BdR]

erico: you mean this forum discussion? I agree with your old posts in large part, although I can believe that Bubble Ball was created by a kid. It's a physics game, developed in Corona which has built-in physics support, and his mom helped out with some app store/licence stuff.

But the Golden Age Of Fart Apps is long gone now. I mean around 2008~2009 some people actually made serious money with "sound board" apps (surely not millions of dollars, but I guess hundreds possibly even thousands?). Just add a button and play a soundfile, not very sophisticated stuff and a kid could do that, sure. But today it's a different thing.

[erico]

Yep, maybe it´s possible (the bubble ball), but I have some doubts. While lua on corona is supposed to be simple, it is not for a non-coder.

"The golden age of fart apps"  haaa I can´t believe I read that!
Again, I´m not sure about lua, but you would have to code that button, probably save/edit the sound file in a format compatible with the many devices, you would also have to deal with the screen layout, etc. While possible, I think we see more kids stuff on the likes of game maker or other more visual creators.

Kids do have more exposure to computers nowadays, but I think this exposure is on the end-user level, facebook, word, games, steam, etc.
I don´t see much of coding exposure and people, even kids, I show my codes they can´t understand what is going on, and rarely they show any interest at all in controlling the computer for its own needs.

I also don´t see much of the creative exposure either. While back on the amiga we had many simple tools for art and sound. It is not quite the same nowadays. Photoshop or gimp, are quite complex tools. Fastracker or madtracker are also quite complicated.

Back on my 12lves, you could only use a computer if you had some knowledge of basic. I even tried to learn assembler and some machine code for my trs80 color...of course I didn´t manage much. But I see absolutely no one, kids or teens nowadays messing with anything computer related on a more low level...but some can outperform their parents on facebook.

[fuzzy70]

Golden Age Of Fart Apps

That made me giggle    

I agree with Erico's comments. Computers in the 80's & early 90's came with a built in (or loadable) programming language which apart from a couple of exceptions was BASIC so it was always there. Obviously not everyone explored that side of their computers but a large percentage had at least a dabble even if was a program listing that came in the manual. That and the fact that unless you was rich (or had a lot of friends who had computers & done "School yard game swapping") your games selection was tiny compared to what is available now, there is probably more games available on Facebook than what was available in the shops back then  & that is just one site out of 100's/1000's.

Out of the big 3 back then (Amiga/Atari ST/PC), the Amiga came bundled with Basic for a while but was dropped after a couple of years, I cannot comment on the Atari as not as familiar with it's history as much & the PC had basic until DOS was completely dropped. Both the Amiga & ST had 2 niches, 1 as game machines & the other (from a professional point) was primarily graphics on the Amiga & music on the ST thanks to it's midi ports. PC's where still very expensive & most homes that had them where used in a more work related way. Before I get flamed I didn't mention the Archimedes in the above mainly due to it was not as big a seller as the ones mentioned, even though it was a very good machine.

Today PC's etc do not come with any form of programming as such, sure you can download the Visual Studio Express versions for free (plus numerous others of course) but unless you are made aware of them by someone who uses them or if they are mentioned in school most kids have no idea they exist. While Macs have Xcode & unix the GNU suite normally installed I very much doubt that a school is going to teach C++/Obj C to young kids or even teenagers, assuming they have Macs/Linux boxes at school in the 1st place.

From what I have seen from my step brothers son's teachings at school with computers it is geared to using apps rather than creating them & any programming is of the "Point & Click" variety than raw coding as such. Obviously that may be different depending on what country you are from & to some degree what part of the UK you are as well.

So in a nutshell unless you have a friend or relative that does programming of any sort most kids are unaware that it even exists or even an interest in it.

Lee

[erico]

Somehow it feels like computers nowadays are more on the ´consume´ part then the ´create´ one.

Amiga, atari st and archimedes already had a very good user interface(even till these days), it made easy for people to use it.
That packed with bundles of dpaint, etc, made those really a good creative machine.

Back then, I got AMOS from a cu amiga cover disk
It marked an era for me that finally I had access to an understandable language powerfull enough to perform the machines capabilities.

But back on the 64kb computer days, coco, apple II, msx, synclair, etc. You could only operate the computer by some kind of basic or dos, even to load a program to use was a hassle...all those cassete stuff hehe, fine tunning the cassete players control + a lot of prayer an IO error would not pop up half an hour later
No icons, no mouse, nothing.

If you were interested on what the box could do for you, best choice were books and magazines, long lists and so on.
I was about 8/9 when I got my very first coco II. It was all english, not my native language.
The graphic adventures (IFs) and BASIC were the prime reason I asked my parents to put me on an english teaching school.
By that time, I used to draw a lot of comics, create board games and play piano (organ/synth kind of stuff).
The computer was a box that could help me out on my greatest dreams mixing that all.
Basic has always been my preferable language.

I guess I´m wall texting and babbling...

But there is one curious point on today´s coding world. There dosen´t seem to be enough interest on low level languages (assembler and all that).
Currently, my father is working with IBM to provide a course on low level programming and system analyses plus data banks and all that geared towards IBM´s mainframe computers. It is supposed to take place at a brazillian government tech school.
There seem to be a worldwide shortage of that kind of professionals and that gets more and more valuable by the minute, hence the interest on IBM to scavenge brasil for possible work force.
By the numbers disclosed by IBM, these professionals hold stupidly high salaries worldwide(which I think is fair, as low level coding requires a life time dedication) and are hunted by corporations in a very tough way.

I also heard about worldwide reforms on education to start providing people access to such on a more younger level. There seems to be a prediction that the shortage of competent people dealing assembler or machine language to super computers could cause problems in a very near future.

Strange times we are facing.

Last time my brother came by for a visit, he was taking courses on G-language for he is a genetic engineer scientist...sounded to me like a script language towards genomic computing, something like a python or lua geared to calculations. Not many of his scientist friends showed interest for such. How could you compute genetic science these days without the aid of powerfull computers and knowledge to handle it?

Yesterday as we talked, he showed interest on coding and we share a GLB key. I really hope he dedicates time to it.
Enough of babblings...

edit: Feels like today´s coding knowledge is an inherit stuff...

[hardyx]

I think all this stories about kids selling apps an getting millions of dollars are a complete fake. Most they are stories about parents like dad or mom making an app, and says that it's created by his child for get the media attention. I'm thinking I'm going to release a game and I'm goint to say that it's created by my 5 years old nephew.

[BdR]

"The golden age of fart apps"  haaa I can´t believe I read that!

Thanks, it's a phrase I'm coining here I remember the whole fart app thing because of an episode of The Daily Show which had a segment called iFued. The creators of "iFart" and "Pull My Finger" had a legal battle over their respective fart apps and even took it to court. Seriously "Your Honour, my clients fart app clearly predates our fart app.." etc Can you imagine that?

[erico]

Compared the crap discussed above, this is MUCH MUCH more significant:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2327021/Esha-Khare-Teens-invention-charge-cellphone-20-seconds.html

real science, real results....

That is interesting. I don´t know much about nano-chemistry to judge what is going on.  But we know batteries have always been bad on anything portable with rare exceptions. It seems the battery industry has no will to evolve at all.

The last news I read from the battery front, said much of the chemical power technology designed some 10 years ago proved to be unshrinkable or had some hazard limitation. Could this one really bring results? 18 years old is a bit more feasible, but it seems to me access to equipments to work nano chemicals is not something quite available on american´s high schools, neither the knowledge you gain on advanced quemistry.