Mexican students win Apple programming challenge

Emilia, a Software Programming Engineering student at the Autonomous University of Chiapas presented an application that accompanies people to learn to make equations in a playful way. In addition to being one of the programmers of the iOS Lab that Apple recently opened in the state, thanks to his initiative he had the opportunity to meet Tim Cook through a video call in which he gave him comments on his development.

In the case of David Martínez Celis, the Computer Technology Engineering student from the Monterrey Techhe also had access to his university’s iOS Lab to finish developing the app Checkmate! which aims to teach step by step how to learn chess.

Another Tec student, Erick Daniel Padilla, focused on the development of the TaxCam app, which, through Vision technology within Apple devices, is capable of detecting the texts of the product labels in order to make the calculations of taxes that are charged in states of the United States and thus make the process of returning them easier.

The youngest of them, René Martínez Villaseñor, a high school student at the English collegemade the Mexico Clicker app, to teach in a playful way about the history of Mexico, answering questions and advancing in the application as they answer correctly.

Each of them worked with SWIFT Playground, a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that teaches you to code in a fun and interactive way with Swift, Apple’s programming language used by professionals to create the most popular apps on the market today. day. And since it doesn’t require prior knowledge, it’s ideal for students who are just starting to code.

Other recognized apps around the world

Among the students who won this challenge who also submitted their application to Tim Cook are a Canadian and two Brazilians.

Omar Abu Sharar, 16, a high school student in British Columbia, developed an app focused on mental health that incorporates information on this topic, as well as breathing and journaling activities to lower people’s stress levels.

Another application related to this is the one designed by the marketing student from Brazil, María Eduarda Lucena, who by integrating yoga movements that users can follow through simple instructions through the Lotus app, also seeks to reduce the impact that anxiety on a daily basis. For her, participating in this challenge and learning programming through SWIFT is an example that this language is suitable for people from any background.

Another Brazilian student, 21-year-old Matheus Zanivan, also used the knowledge he gained at Apple Academy to develop different applications such as one designed to prepare the home before adopting a cat or another that indicates the places that have a bicycle lane in a city. However, for the challenge, he participated with the Color Sense app, which seeks to portray the way in which a person with color blindness sees the world, with the aim of raising awareness about this condition.

These three students, along with Emilia from Chiapas, had the opportunity to receive feedback from Tim Cook on the development of their apps.