Kiwi student named among Apple's coding comp winners

A 15-year-old tech whizz from Auckland has been named as the sole Kiwi among the 2024 winners of Apple's annual coding challenge for student developers.

Westlake Boys High School student Alex Liang told 1News he spent three months developing his entry — an educational astronomy app "more like a game" designed to interactively teach children about the order of the planets.

"For me it's a bit more than an app. I run a lot of groups here at the Auckland Astronomical Society so I want to inspire more young people [to get] into astronomy and possibly coding too."

Every year, as part of its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple issued a challenge to students across the globe to create an original app playground using the Swift coding language.

"My dad was showing me Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. I thought, 'maybe one day I could win something like that?' Which inspired me to start coding, and then I found out there was a student competition," he said.

Liang said he dedicated three or four hours every day to work on the entry, and said working out the errors in coding can be "challenging".

"Every three lines I wrote, there [was] a bug, which was really annoying."

He said his mum hung motivational posters on his wall saying "no bugs today" and "learning so easy" to motivate his efforts.

"Coding at first, it sucks, when you see a huge line of code and think 'what on earth is that?' It will be painful at the start, but as you go up more and more, like a staircase, your level of understanding will grow. And that's part of the learning, you know? It's a challenge."

Liang is now forming a plan with Auckland's Stardome Observatory and Planetarium to gift the app for use in its educational programmes.

"I think [the app] could potentially inspire even more people to get an interest in astronomy and for people to appreciate the beauty of space and science."

"The most important thing I took away is really about doing things you like doing. That's why you're good at it and that's why I could win such an ambitious challenge. If you can dream it, you can do it."

A match written in the stars

Stardome Observatory and Planetarium chief executive Victoria Travers said she was delighted by the prospect of being gifted the app, which she described as "absolutely incredible".

"The user interface is so simple, it's really elegant and I can't believe he did the whole thing himself at just 15 years old. But just his passion for it is so incredible," she said.

Travers said she felt privileged to inspire children and adults alike to love space, saying Alex's passion for astronomy was sparked at Stardome when he was just eight years old.

"The space industry is really taking off and we in New Zealand are a really legitimate player, but if we're going to have that continue, we need to have these young minds coming in.

"And also these young minds coming in and seeing that there is a career path available in this and that it is legitimate, and its lucrative and its really really exciting."

She said Alex, who has achieved so much already at a young age, was going to be "really inspiring for other kids coming through and other adults as well".

"He said one of the biggest thrills is that he wants to give back and give [the app] to us so that we can hopefully use it with our tamariki and with our education programmes and also with the public.

"He's just incredibly inspiring."