Meet Apple's Youngest App Developer. She's Nine

Anvitha Vijay, a 9-year old student developer at the Apple WWDC conference

Apple's youngest developer; 9-year old Anvitha Vijay; created an iPad/iPhone app about animals -Smartkins Animals in Melbourne, Australia. The app uses sounds and flash cards to help children learn animal names and sounds. This app was inspired from the idea of teaching her younger sister to speak. Vijay applied to be selected for one of the coveted scholarships to attend Apple's annual developer conference.

To her delight, Apple said yes, and now she's signing autographs, posing for selfies with grown-up app developers and hanging with Apple CEO Tim Cook. At WWDC, scholarship winners get to attend coding and programming sessions, and mix and mingle with app developers, to learn from veterans.

"It was like a dream to be here and meet so many people," Vijay says. "I've just touched the tip of the iceberg in coding, there's so much to learn."

She started coding at age 7 by watching YouTube instructional videos, and was motivated to make an app to teach her younger sister how to identify the names of animals. She used Xcode, an Apple program for creating mobile apps, and has seen a "few hundred" downloads.

She's working on a new app, GoalsHi, to give students more confidence in the classroom. She used Apple's more advanced Swift programming language to work on the new app and is eager to try Swift Playgrounds, a new, easier version of the software Apple introduced at WWDC for kids, on the iPad.

Vijay, working the WWDC room like a pro, finishes the interview by walking up to developers at WWDC and handing out her business card, which has her name and a motto: "I want to make a difference in people's lives through technology."

Back home, she used her mom's iPhone (under mom's name) because you have to be 13 to get an iTunes account.

Asked to name her favorite app, "besides mine?" she cites the White Tiles 4 app, which was created in China, in 2014.

Jefferson Graham posing for a selfie with 9-year old Anvitha Vijay

What does she want to be when she grows up? "I want to be an innovator, to build things that people will love and benefit from," she said.

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>>Source/Image: usatoday