别人9岁开发了两款应用，你9岁时在做什么？

安薇塔•维贾伊（Anvitha Vijay）7岁时有一个梦想，那就是开发一款移动应用。看着存钱罐里仅有的130美元（这是她“一辈子”的积蓄），她意识到自己没有足够的钱来聘请开发人员。于是，她花了一年时间在YouTube和其他网站上观看免费的编程教学课程，居然学会了。

如今的维贾伊又长大了两岁，她表示：“编程非常具有挑战性，我很高兴我坚持了下来。”

今年，住在澳大利亚的维贾伊又实现了另一个梦想。她成为了苹果一年一度全球开发者大会（WWDC）最年轻的参加者。与许多与会者一样，维贾伊为苹果的iPhone和iPad开发了一些应用。然而，与其他数千名于本周一前去旧金山莫斯康展览中心（Moscone Center）的开发者最大的不同在于，维贾伊今年只有9岁。

维贾伊是通过苹果的奖学金项目参加全球开发者大会的。该项目为全球各地给苹果设备开发应用的人提供了数百张免费门票。今年的奖学金获得者里，18岁以下的人数为历年之最，背景也是历年来最为多元化的一次。350名奖学金获得者中，有120名是18岁以下的学生。来自科学、技术、工程和数学机构的申请者人数增加了215%。

在今年，申请奖学金的女性人数增长了两倍，有22%的奖学金获得者为女性，这一比例较之去年也有所提高。

苹果正在努力让全球开发者大会的参与者变得多元化。像大多数科技会议一样，该会议目前的参与者主要是白人男性和亚洲男性。瑟古德•马歇尔大学基金会（Thurgood Marshall College Fund）的项目副主席斯科特•利莱表示，苹果去年联系了他的机构，提供了参加全球开发者大会的奖学金。他说：“我认为他们正在努力确保多元化。”在今年的项目中，利莱让两名非裔美国女学生和三名非裔美国男学生参加了全球开发者大会。去年，他只有三个学生的名额。

Coalition for Queens是一家致力于在纽约皇后区向居民传授专业技能的非盈利机构。创始人许居逵表示，今年他们送出了四名优秀的参会者，而去年是两名。许居逵说，所有的参会者都是女性或是有色人种。

维贾伊本人是印度裔，她开发的应用都是供儿童使用的。维贾伊的灵感来自她那蹒跚学步，并且正在学习说话和辨认动物的妹妹。她的第一款作品是Smartkins Animals。该应用会通过声音和抽认卡，帮助儿童识别100种不同动物的名字和声音。随后，她又开发了另一款类似的互动iOS应用，帮助儿童辨认颜色。

维贾伊已经开发了两款应用

描绘开发iOS应用的过程时，维贾伊不像是一个九岁的孩子，更像是一名程序员。她解释道：“把想法转化成应用需要大量艰苦的工作。打造一款应用需要经过许多步骤，包括原型制作、线框绘制、用户界面设计，然后是编码和测试。”

她已经在着手开发下一个应用了，这个应用旨在帮助她的同龄人设立目标。

维贾伊通过网络申请了全球开发者大会的奖学金。她会与父母和妹妹一起，从她的家乡澳大利亚墨尔本乘坐飞机跨越几千英里来到旧金山湾区。

维贾伊表示：“参加全球开发者大会，见到蒂姆•库克是我的梦想。”

译者：严匡正

Seven-year-old Anvitha Vijay had a dream of building a mobile app. With only $130 in her piggy bank (which took her entire lifetime to collect), she realized that she didn’t have enough money to pay a developer to build the app for her. So she spent a year watching free coding tutorials on YouTube and the web, and learned how to program.

“Coding was so challenging,” Vijay said, now two years older. “But I’m so glad I stuck with it.”

This year, Vijay, who lives in Australia is fulfilling another dream of hers. She is the youngest attendee at WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference. Like many of her fellow attendees, Vijay has created a handful of apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad. But the biggest difference between her and the thousands of other developers who will flock San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Monday is that Vijay is now only nine years-old.

Vijay is attending WWDC as part of Apple’s scholarship program, which gives hundreds of free tickets to developers from around the world who are creating apps for Apple devices. This year’s group of recipients saw the most winners under the age of 18, and a more diverse crowd than years past. Out of 350 recipients, 120 of the lucky winners are students under the age of 18. Submissions increased by 215% more than doubled from organizations focused on science, technology, engineering, and math.

The number of women who applied for the scholarship tripled this year, and this year, 22% of scholarship winners are women, which is an increase from last year.

Apple has been making a bigger effort to diversify WWDC, which like most tech conferences, has been overwhelmingly attended by white and Asian males. Scott Lilly, who is vice president of programs at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said that Apple approached his organization to offer scholarships to WWDC last year. “I think they are making sure that diversity is represented,” Lilly said. Under that program this year, Lilly is sending two female African American college students and three African American men to WWDC. Last year, Lilly was only able to send three students.

Coalition for Queens, a nonprofit organization that works to help teach technical skills to Queens residents in New York City, is sending four aspiring developers to WWDC this your through the program, said founder Jukay Hsu, compared to two participants last year. Hsu said all the attendees are women and or people of color.

For Vijay, who is of Indian descent, developing apps is about empowering children. Vijay’s apps were inspired by her toddler sister, who was learning how to talk and identify animals. Her brainchild was the Smartkins Animals app, which uses sounds, and flashcards to help teach children 100 different animals’ names and sounds. She then developed another similar interactive iOS app for children to help them learn colors.

When describing the process of developing an iOS app, Vijay sounds more like a programmer than a nine year old. “Turning an idea for an app involves a lot of hard work,” Vijay explained. “There are so many components to building an app, including prototyping, design and wirreframing, user interface design and then coding and testing.”

She’s already working on her next app, which wants to help kids her won age with setting goals.

Vijay applied for a scholarship for WWDC by applying online. As for her trip to WWDC, Vijay will travel thousands of miles from her hometown in Melbourne, Australia to the Bay Area with her parents and sister.

“It’s my dream to go to WWDC and meet Tim Cook,” Vjay said.