Nine-year-old writes hit iPhone app

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 5 Feb 2009 at 08:28

While most children his age sketch on paper with crayons, nine-year-old Lim Ding Wen from Singapore, has a very different canvas - his iPhone.

Lim writes applications for Apple's popular iPhone. His latest, a painting program called Doodle Kids, has been downloaded more than 4,000 times from Apple's iTunes store in two weeks.

The program lets iPhone users draw with their fingers by touching the iPhone's touchscreen and then clear the screen by shaking the phone.

"I wrote the program for my younger sisters, who like to draw," Lim says. His sisters are aged three and five.

Lim, who is fluent in six programing languages, started using the computer at the age of two. He has since completed about 20 programing projects.

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," the older Lim says.

The boy, who enjoys reading books on programing, is in the process of writing another iPhone application - a science fiction game called Invader Wars.