'20 under 20': Successful app makers younger than you
LOS ANGELES — You don't need a college degree to make great smartphone apps.
Isabella and Sofia Mandich are just finishing up eighth grade, yet their Wild Ski skiing game has long been popular in the Apple iTunes App Store with over 2,500 free downloads.
The Mandich sisters, and 19 other young app makers, have been selected by Apple as part of its 20 under 20 program --a lead-in to its Worldwide Developers Conference being held next Monday -- which includes youth-designed apps on the iTunes front page.
Also on the 20 under 20 roster is Nick Doherty, who hails from Boulder, Colo.; he's paying for his college education thanks to his Study Cal student planning app that he created in high school.
The University of California, Davis student has seen over 100,000 downloads at $1.99 a pop for his app.
"This is the reason I could afford to go to an out-of-state college," he says.
"The great thing about the App Store (is) you don't need a whole team of experienced people to make something successful. Just a great idea and time to make it."
Like many in the 20 Under 20 promotion, Zach Latta, 17, is a serious geek who started coding when he was 7. He got his football themed Football Heroes app in the store in 2013.
Able to graduate high school at age 16, he's now living in San Francisco, where he's formed a non-profit, hackEDU, to teach high school students how to code.
"In high school, I didn't know anyone else who knew how to code," he says. "I want to share what I know with other students."
New York-based Kyle Rosenbluth's free Horizon app is a calendar app featuring weather information. It now has 225,000 downloads.
Rosenbluth, who plans to study computer science in college next year at the University of Pennsylvania, has been creating apps since he was 13.
To other potential young app developers, he says that making apps isn't "as hard as people think. Coding has a certain stigma to it, since it's complex numbers and math. I think it's fun and exciting."
The Mandich sisters knew no other coders in their school, so they learned how to create apps by studying online tutorials.
"It's like learning a new language," says Sofia Mandich. "You have to get used to it."