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This article was taken from the February 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Twelve-year-old Puck Meerburg (above) from Delft, Holland, is an app developer. Since 2010 he has published seven apps for the iPhone and iPad, including a guide for the Netherlands' oldest museum, the Teylers in Haarlem. "My dad had got an iPhone and I was interested in how you wrote apps for it," he says. "So I downloaded the software development kit. I had already written a web app called TafelTrainer, which helps kids learn their times tables, so I turned it into something for the iPhone."
Meerburg taught himself JavaScript, PHP and the JavaScript library resource jQuery when he was "about seven or eight".
TafelTrainer was followed by a card-game app called 4 Kings, and last October he launched The Quizzer, an app that links an iPad and some iPhones into a general-knowledge quiz.
His apps -- mostly free, with the exception of
TafelTrainer+ and The Quizzer -- were downloaded about 75,000 times in 2011. His ambition is to be a games designer - like his idol, Minecraft creator Markus " Notch" Persson. "In ten years, computers will be super-fast," he says. "We'll be able to play games using brain sensors."
Meerburg, who plays piano and is learning Arduino, is also becoming something of a pundit, appearing on Dutch television and at conferences such as SIME in Stockholm and TEDxYouth in Amsterdam. "It's fun to be asked about the apps," he says. "But I like programming best."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
