AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers

Oscar Gorog, a WWDC 2020 Student Challenge Winner

July 01, 2021 Jeroen Leenarts
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers
Oscar Gorog, a WWDC 2020 Student Challenge Winner
AppForce1: news and info for iOS app developers +
Help us continue making great content for listeners everywhere.
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Oscar was one of the WWDC 2020 student challenge winners. Learn how Oscar got started on software development and his path to being a student challenge winner. Oscar is young and still has some big choices to make in the next 2 years, but he seems to know what path he wants to take.

The I.T. Career Podcast
Your ultimate guide to success in the I.T. industry. Helping you Grow your career!

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Runway
Put your mobile releases on autopilot and keep the whole team in sync throughout. More info on runway.team

Lead Software Developer 
Learn best practices for being a great lead software developer.

Support the show

Rate me on Apple Podcasts.

Send feedback on SpeakPipe
Or contact me on Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@appforce1

Support my podcast with a monthly subscription, it really helps.

My book: Being a Lead Software Developer

Jeroen Leenarts:

Welcome to another special episode. I'm sitting here with Oscar grok. I hope I pronounced that name correctly, Oscar. Let's see your students Challenge winner with Apple. What year was that?

Oscar Gorog:

Last year? 2020.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So 2020. So you're a reasonably young person? If I'm correct. So what's your age share right now?

Oscar Gorog:

I'm 15 at the moment.

Jeroen Leenarts:

15. So and when you entered the student challenge, what age were you then?

Oscar Gorog:

1414.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So, just before we get started, the father of Oscar has consented to us doing this recording. So that's all well and good. So Oscar. Hi, and welcome to my podcast. Monday, it is WWDC when we're recording this. So it's right before the next event, so to speak. Exciting. And probably when we polish this, it'll be a little bit after the fact. But what are you looking forward to? For Monday for come Monday?

Oscar Gorog:

Mostly everything I'm really mostly wanting some good development improvements, X code that's kind of on mainly on maybe some new Swift frameworks.

Jeroen Leenarts:

And so you mentioned Xcode specifically. So what what are your biggest challenges with Xcode?

Oscar Gorog:

Just not crashing all the time and just working a good amount?

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah, that's that's, that's always good to have. Because today, I actually worked at a problem that it's, it's not allowed to publish to the App Store with 11.4. But it is able to publish to the App Store with 11.5. And they didn't change anything to the source code. So something's up there. So hopefully, many more good releases of Xcode in the future.

Oscar Gorog:

I have. So I'm almost looking forward to some updates, hopefully, with iPad iOS. And I know lots of people have talked about this, especially when the M, one iPad came out. I was just so confused when they put the chip in the iPad, because I didn't know you know, the iPad was already so fast. And now it's like,

Jeroen Leenarts:

on a faster.

Oscar Gorog:

Yeah, it's ridiculous. So hopefully, they'll release some, some improvements that make more desktop like but I was thinking about it a bit. And you know, there are a lot of rumors of Xcode and Final Cut Pro coming to iPad. And I don't really want that because I feel like it'll just Apple tries to differentiate the iPad and computer. And if you put pro apps that are meant for computer on iPads, just gonna blur the line even more. And I feel like it's gonna make it very out the word is just very hard for a consumer to choose what to buy.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah, so you mean that's the line between blurring like a device or a proper computer? Yeah, in a laptop, we will be very fake indeed. Something that might be interesting to people listening to this is that you have a distinct, non UK non US accent. Can you tell a little bit where you're from?

Oscar Gorog:

Yes, I'm from Australia and something interesting. I live in Victoria. And at the moment, we've actually been put in a lockdown. Usually, well, they see we've been pretty good with the virus and we haven't been locked out much. But whenever we get a couple cases, the government really doesn't want it to explode. So they just put everything in lockdown for a couple days. And this lockdown was initially seven days announcement 14 days and hopefully it'll finish a couple days. At nine, that's that.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So but being in a lockdown. How's that for you? As a 15 year old?

Oscar Gorog:

I mean, I don't mind. I just get to see my desk all day long. Not that bad. Oh, yeah, friends. You know, we're pretty much used to it by now with some big lockdown last year. But it's fine. But would

Jeroen Leenarts:

you say that is it is a benefit for you that you have like a computer and an entire developer ecosystem to to lose yourself in to blow away some time so to speak.

Oscar Gorog:

Yeah, it is good, but I definitely prefer being at school.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz here in the Netherlands, so where I'm from, we also had some lockdowns and I'm with a family as well, young kids three year old and a six year old now. And those two they were like, they will go up against the wall. It was it was insane. It was yeah, it was a lot of energy that was not possible to be like spent by them. So but I hope you'll pull through okay, and that thing settled down a bit. In Australia fast, because being outside in the sun is always better than being cooped up inside. Yeah. So a 15 year old, you're from Australia student Challenge winner. So the student challenge. How did that happened? Can you tell a little bit about that?

Oscar Gorog:

Yes. So I've been applying since 2019, I think. And then in 2020, we're in the middle of a pandemic, and actually came into great time because we were locked out. And so I had lots of time. And so I went to most of my classes, but I didn't do any work. Usually head to sec coding most of the days. So I built two parts to my, my first part was a skiing game where you had to ski down a slope with other like AI bots that would have the Coronavirus or wouldn't. And if you touched one of them that had the Coronavirus, and got it, you had to not punch people who didn't happen to not inject people, all that COVID. And then when you get to the bottom of the mountain, you're like holding the dub dub merch. You have to like put it in a postbox. So that was the first. And the second part, I made a machine learning camera app or you pointed an iPad at a surface. So whether that's like cardboard, paper, wood, whatever. And then it tells you how long COVID can survive for on their surface. Sam Wood, it could slide for seven days on paper, maybe one day. And I went around the house taking photos, anything I could find with my phone, you know, wood or paper, anything. And my parents thought I looked crazy, because I didn't know what I was actually just walking around dating voters everything. I've still got the photos in my camera roll, which is probably not.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So but the Surface Detection with AR is that something that's built into the API or the framework or something you had to come up with yourself? So the material detection? I mean,

Oscar Gorog:

no, no, I didn't make that with the machine learning classifier.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay, so you did some machine learning. You did some AR, you did some game type development, because was it back in 2020? That you could submit your student challenge as a as an app or what is it like a like a Swift Playgrounds with Swift Playgrounds, okay, so you can actually do quite a lot of things in in a playground, I guess. So. So you, you submitted your, your work? And then And then what's the process then.

Oscar Gorog:

And then I just waited. And a week, as I was walking home, I got an email and it said something like, Lauren here from Apple PR reaching out, and I'm like, what? I thought it was fake at first, honestly didn't know it was happening. So I wrote the email, it said, um, I asked her which wanted to reach out and get a couple more details about participants for the swift student challenge. 2020 It didn't say winners or anything like that. He just said we wanted to get more details. As I responded to the email with a bit more bad May my journey. And then a week later, you know, we went back and forth, but there was never any indication of me winning. And then a week later I woke up at 2am to the results that I'd won.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay. And then you won, then you get at some point, you get the student challenge package at home,

Oscar Gorog:

or sitting. I'm very protective. It's all just sitting in a box in a ship. Never to be seen

Jeroen Leenarts:

under lock and key or an opens even or it's been

Oscar Gorog:

opened. I've bought it before, but it's barely, barely worn.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay, so yeah, you're very, you're very, what should I say? Protective? Yeah. But that's. So you want to challenge but you also mentioned, Apple asked you about your journey into software development. So can you tell a little bit about that? When did you get started with computers? Actually?

Oscar Gorog:

Probably in probably when I was 10 or 11. So that must have been 2017 or 2018. I just started with Swift Playgrounds, the iPad. Yeah, there are like some modules that take you through The basics of programming. And then from there, I moved on to Xcode, I started looking at the Swift tutorials. And I was really fortunate because my dad worked at a software development company. So he knew a couple people who did swift development at that company. So we reached out to them and said, you want to come to my son of Swift? So they came and told me quite a bit of Swift and I kind of built a couple apps along with them. Yeah. And then eventually, I just kept going, you know that. I probably finished the tutoring in 2019. When I first applied for the challenge. Yeah. And from there, I just kept building my apps.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So you started with the with the Swift Playgrounds sorry, with the basics. And in what way? Did these people tutoring you help you along? How did it help you further? What was the what were the hurdles that they helped you overcome?

Oscar Gorog:

It was mostly helping me with problems or some something like I was using the storyboard, then, like setting constraints in the storyboard I just never understood. And I always had trouble with that. And then, when my app would just crash unexpectedly, I didn't, I didn't know to look anything up on Stack Overflow. So I would just be like, what is happening? Stuff like that helping me with issues that come up.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So basically, they gave you the ability to to learn on your own, you could say, to be able to diagnose a problem, know what the correct keywords are, be able to find somewhat of a relevant hit on that online, and then you're able to, to distill that into something that might apply to your situation. Yeah, exactly. So it's very interesting what you mentioned there, because that's the learning to learn. principle that is very important if you want to get anything done in your life, either professionally, or as an individual, which is really cool, because and did these people? Did they? Did they enjoy tutoring you? Or was it difficult for them to translate that they enjoyed it? No, they enjoyed it. Yeah. Because I can imagine that if you're a professional software developer, and do that every day, it might be difficult to translate actually to like, something that you as a reasonably unexperienced individual can can grasp and understand and build upon. Yeah. All right. What was that? Like?

Oscar Gorog:

Now? I'm sure they enjoyed it. I mean, it seemed like they enjoyed I enjoyed

Jeroen Leenarts:

it. Yeah, your dad was like, right outside the room? Keeping an eye? Yeah, maybe even. So, um, so yeah, you got some tutoring? And then you continued on on your own? Were there any big challenges or things that you ran into that were really that felt like being a roadblock? Or was it all relatively easy? Or what's the process for you to when you're writing code?

Oscar Gorog:

Um, there were a couple of challenges. But that's kind of though they were kind of on an app basis. And I eventually got through sometimes they took ages to solve sometimes I didn't, really just depends. Usually, when I hit a problem, I just tell myself, it'll eventually work itself out. I'll you know, I'll eventually work it out. And eventually it might take ages. But it does work. I work at something I've had that when I was working on my dad dumps. I didn't know how to use the physics layer around sprites. And I didn't understand it at all. And it was only a couple days before I did submit, I totally understood it. And then I could really expand on the code I'd written for that section of the app and make it look cleaner and concise, more concise.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So and what what made you able to understand this this physics layer? Was it something that you did by trial and error or was it looking up material or videos online? Or what was the

Oscar Gorog:

I looked up a couple things online, a couple of videos, but it was mostly me just continuing to use it. I find that when I do something actively, like when I watch a video of someone coding, I really learn anything but when I actually coded, you know, I really learned

Jeroen Leenarts:

so you're a student Challenge winner. You started like, just a couple years ago with fruit with the basics really? Did you have any exposure to compute Before that, or was it mostly as a consumer of like video games or stuff, or online or

Oscar Gorog:

now had a pretty good experience of computers at a young age. My grandparents kind of brought apple in the family that bought I bought the first Apple Computer. Yeah, Joe actually got, I've got one, the second one sitting next to me, one of the old Macintoshes. And from there, I was always playing games on my dad's phone. But it wasn't like gaming on anything. It was just like, like small video games. And then eventually, one day, my dad said to me, do you want to learn to code and my gaps? Like, yeah, that sounds great. And I thought, initially, I was gonna make games. But I just didn't. I didn't enjoy making games. Mostly because I just, I enjoy playing games, but not, not 24/7. Like, like, a lot of my friends sit on their Playstations 24/7 During online learning, which I just could not do.

Jeroen Leenarts:

But you did try, right? Yeah, no, I tried. So, um, so yeah. So basically, you did some casual gaming on, like your father's device on just some simple games, really. And then your father popped the idea of you learning to code yourself. And that was the point in time that you started with the Swift Playgrounds, I'd reckon. Yeah. So and if you if you look at yourself as a software developer, right now. So what are the things that you currently are working on in code?

Oscar Gorog:

So I'm working on my school app called schooling last students to capture do work and track their time. And my goal for it? Well, first of all, I just couldn't find a good app on the App Store that did all of that, what I wanted, especially in particular, always been updated with the latest frameworks. So when, like, something like widgets, I bought something, this was probably just, I probably started making some mock ups of it just before that done. And after, I knew where it was gonna go. I knew I wanted to do widgets, and Siri shortcuts. And you know, all those fun, Apple API things. And eventually, at the moment, I'm working on an Apple Watch app, which is another framework I'm trying to get into. And then I wanted to, I wanted to already have been working on a Mac app with Catalyst. But I figured I might as well finish the watch app and life a dub dub and see if they announce anything. Catalyst related that would make it easier, even easier. Remembering my Mac, which I'm hoping that will.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah. And so it's an app that you create, for your own use case, when you're going to school or at least attending either online or in person. Yeah. And yeah. And and what are the things that you are able to, to automate, which are app for people that are attending a school like you are.

Oscar Gorog:

So you put in your do work and your timetable? Yeah. And the main thing is, you can just track those things. So with due work, you can attach images and links and notes. And then with the timetable, you can put widgets, you know, on your home screen, and your timetable automatically updates. And that supports all these different types of timetables, which was another big thing for me making, like a good API that supports you just give it like a date. And it just spits out the timetable. That was one of the challenges I had. And then soon on Apple Watch and Mac the same thing with Mac on widgets, and then with Apple Watch or complications when you do work and your timetable

Jeroen Leenarts:

so that you can easily see what part of your subject matter you need to be working on to make sure that you do you meet all the deadlines that you're dealing with your students. And so I do work I can, I can imagine that's just a paper or some project that you need to submit at a specific time. And but the timetable What can you tell us a little bit more about that? What what it involves? Because I reckon that classes that you need to attend maybe some labs that you need to attend or what's in the timetable.

Oscar Gorog:

So mainly, it's just the start time and the end time but you can also attach a teacher in a classroom, which also shows up on the widgets.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay. And is the all the entry you do in the app? Is that something that you need to do for your own case? Or is it something that you can source from somewhere online or

Oscar Gorog:

not? At the moment, you have to do it yourself. But I'm looking into options to make it a lot faster. Because at the moment, I know it's pretty slow. A couple of my friends use it. And they've told me it was a bit of a pain. But once it's all set up, it's great. But, you know, getting it set up was a bit annoying.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah, it's bit, it's a bit of work to get started with. We talked about you being a student Challenge winner. We talked a little bit about the app that you're currently working on, we looked to the past, and we looked at the present. So let's look a little bit to the future. What are your plans for software development? That's a moment because you're only 15 years old. And who knows, maybe once you go to university or wherever you end up, you might choose a completely different vocation. But what's your current outlook on the future?

Oscar Gorog:

You know, it's funny, a couple years ago, in Australia, we do something called VCA. So you pick minimum for most people do six, laser, Moscow, most people six. And you know, a couple years ago, I already knew what subjects I'm doing. One of them is applied computing. And so I know what subjects I'm going to do. But I don't know what course in University I'm going to do. And I really have no idea. And we recently did something called the Morris speed test, which most students do in the can. And you add, so it's like a three hour test, and you add some questions about yourself about it kind of like, um, I was gonna say something called NAPLAN, you don't have that. It's another Australian. Kind of all these weird questions.

Jeroen Leenarts:

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter your, your interests or doesn't matter.

Oscar Gorog:

It's like your interest and how good you are with maths and how your mind can visualize things.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay, so it's also an aptitude based? Yes. So let's say I can see what what are your interests? What are you good at, and that that spits out something that might be a good fit for you?

Oscar Gorog:

Yeah. And it puts a put that into, like, a massive report on everything you know, has got interest about you whether you like to work independently. It's got everything, but what it mainly tells you is subjects, you can you could consider for Psych courses you could consider in university. So I got stuff like data analysis software developer, and I also got a couple science thing. I can't remember what they are. I think I got geologists, something to do with physics and sound, it's just good to have like a list of things that you can look at and xao and maybe do this. And then when you go into each course it shows you like similar courses. So it was really a great platform to kind of see what I could consider. Okay, but at the moment, I really don't know what I want to do. To be honest. I think I want to do something to do with science and computers, but I'm not really sure. So and

Jeroen Leenarts:

when are what Ah, are you when when you really have to make a decision then.

Oscar Gorog:

After like the final exams in year 12.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay, so that's your in year 10. Now, you mentioned you think so at

Oscar Gorog:

the moment, my you levels about Baghdad decision for what subjects we all want to do for the next two years. And then you do exams on each of those subjects. And then that goes towards something called an ATAR, which is like a score out of 100. And then that's what you use to get into university.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay, yeah, cuz it's the same in the Netherlands, you you have to make decisions already, like between h 10. And 17. Really, that immediately have quite a large impact on why you will end up with your education because if you take path that's more like science base, or like a lot of math or chemistry or like, you know, the hardest, the hardest subjects harder in that they're more technical and more involved with like, calculations and stuff. I choose more of like a creative sight like subjects, like music and history and poetry and those kinds of subject but choosing in those directions. And now what I'm describing is quite extreme, really, but it really limits our theory. It cuts off certain options for your last two years and your education right. So you already made some stations that put in some limitations. I reckon. It's been a while since since I was your age, but I had to choose like, no, no, it's not no not I couldn't choose six subjects. But I had basically six subjects when I was pretty mature age. But those were really topical, you know, there was Dutch language, English history, chemistry, science, and I think it was maths. And that's that was basically, in more broad strokes, the the subject matter that was taught to me, and also had biology. But you can already hear by the subjects that I was taught in my education that that what was really already pushing me in a certain direction, you know that it was like more into a scientific or technical or something doing maths or whatever. But what's your outlook on the on those choices? You already have to make it like age 12 1314,

Oscar Gorog:

I'm pretty happy with the choices I've made. I've done. You have to do English. That's girls, right? I've done maths. I'm going to do physics, Applied Computing, which, at some schools, you have the option, usually you do their four units to each subject. Yeah. And you do two units per year. So you usually do the first two units and your 11th, last unit 12. But you have the option of doing a subject starting in year 10. And then you finish it in year 11. So you kind of take some of the pressure off the new 11 and 12, as I'm doing Applied Computing earlier, which is what I'm doing at the moment. And then I'm also doing this, I'm doing Haber, yeah, you have to do a Jewish you have to do a Jewish subject in Moscow. And then there's one more and I haven't really decided on this, but it's either going to be chemistry, Business Studies, or another math.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Okay. Just just to dive on the topic a little bit. Did you have a lot of prior exposure to Hebrew in your in your life? Or is it like a completely new subject matter for you?

Oscar Gorog:

Now, it's not completely new, but I've learned it all my life. And I'm still pretty bad. But it's cool. It's called Hebrew vet, you can do things for VET subjects, where it's either you pass or you fail, it's on a percentage. And then there's kind of kind of shade where you can get an extra 5% of your score. I don't really understand how that works. But because it's pass and fail, and you get three attempts per assessment. A lot of people choose it, because it's like, pretty easy. And because you get like extra marks, I don't really understand how.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So yeah, you're already choosing a lot of things for the future. So So what are the things you currently do on a day to day basis that really brightens your day that really makes you happy when you're doing it?

Oscar Gorog:

I've got a great family. I've got great friends.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah, and you get to do stuff that you seem to enjoy right now.

Oscar Gorog:

Yeah, and I get great opportunities.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So would you say that those opportunities, how much of those are created by your own doing? And how many of those are created by the positive environment that you're in?

Oscar Gorog:

I think it's probably 5050. I would say like the Apple thing that's, like my own something. I think I discovered or my dad discovered, I don't really remember one of us getting up. And then the school has a couple of opportunities with universities. And some other stuff, which I'm going to be doing pretty soon. What are you looking forward to a dub dub, I'm interested to hear other people's are

Jeroen Leenarts:

basically, I hope, some things will be made easier, you know, for you, it's like Xcode not crashing. What I'm really looking forward to is to maybe that they will provide some way to do a proper app with Swift package manager, because now it's a bit of you can pull in external dependencies with Swift package manager, but you can't really define an app in Swift package manager

Oscar Gorog:

started using the sub pack package manager a lot more like especially over cocoa pods just because it's so much better integrated into Xcode to close it and on terminal.

Jeroen Leenarts:

I have an employer and I work on a big codebase and like, this week, we were able to get rid of CocoaPods as a as a So our third party integration layer, and it's all pretty much Swift package manager based or manual frameworks, but we use like this little in between tool that generates our Xcode projects called Twist. And it's really cool that, that we were able to get rid of CocoaPods. Because it's, we don't have to install the entire Ruby runtime anymore and all that stuff. Yeah. But yeah, I'm really expecting some great upgrades to, to the Swift package manager really, so but that's more like the Swift language. So a lot of that's already known with what's coming in Swift 5.5. You've probably also seen Paul Hudson's article on on Swift 5.5.

Oscar Gorog:

I have I need I need, I need a brief read through really, you know, this is one of the things I don't understand the async async functions and all this stuff, I really just do not understand what is happening.

Jeroen Leenarts:

What parts you don't understand what the syntax does, or what the whole async thing is doing in the on the machine layer.

Oscar Gorog:

The whole Isaac thing and what just everything everything ballets do not understand. All I know is this dispatch, cute name async. is plugged in. It's

Jeroen Leenarts:

quite often, that's all you need. Right? Yeah. So yeah, so as I mentioned, the Swift package manager, and yeah, I'm, I'm really curious to what they're gonna do to the different platforms, you know, because with iOS 14, we had a lot of privacy updates. We had a lot of fine tuning of this new this this flatter layout, because they had this so skeuomorphic thing to the extreme, like in iOS five or six, I think it was

Oscar Gorog:

interesting to see if they bring the Mac OS icon, so iOS and make it even more, getting more pick.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah. And what I noticed is that with all the styling that they're doing of the WWDC pages, it's there's a lot of like, like, design touches from the messages in there. So I'm thinking, Oh, wow, Apple doesn't do those things very, like

Oscar Gorog:

no, no one knows. Usually, we know, with the phones a lot, you know, there lots of leaks, then for release, but we really know nothing of this.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Nothing, nothing. It's quite amazing.

Oscar Gorog:

Hundreds of people working on this stuff. 1000s even.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Yeah, and so I reckon that on Monday, it's going to be like, either, like, everybody's going to be really, really excited and happy, or it's going to be a huge letdown, or whatever, always have some apprehension about with every WWDC is basically okay, what API are they gonna, like, pull from under us this time, because I still remember that we had the NSURL connection to NSURL session transition. So that's basically how to like, change out your entire network layer in reasonable amounts of time. And all this, and the guys that that have had these kinds of treatments by Apple, so at some point in the past, you could actually do proper Java development on on a Mac, even. And nowadays that's like, near to impossible to actually do well, so but what is your take on on,

Oscar Gorog:

I really want to see, you know, you're talking about the transition between NSURL. And URL, I want to say something new is core data. I, a lot of a couple of people have said to me, Core Data is old. And it's not good. I use it in school. And I think it's great. But when people talk about, you know, newest features and better integration with Swift UI, that's something I really want to see. Especially, I think I was 13, they brought out something called anyone who's familiar with Core Data knows in a system container, they brought out in this persistent cloud kick container, which automatically syncs your Core Data Store to iCloud. The problem is, it's super unreliable, you don't know when the uploads happen, you can't communicate anything to the user. So I'm hoping they also update that and make it a lot more developer accessible.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Because I'm hearing a lot of people say things about the persistent cloud kit container and and basically, what I hear a lot of people doing is that they, they start out with Core Data and then using the persistent cloud kit container. And then at some point, they just switch away from that to something that involves just basic cloudkit records so that you

Oscar Gorog:

that's what I'm doing now. I'm just talking made a whole manual thing, which I think anyways, much better because I had total control over how everything works.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Uh huh. So yeah, and what's your experience with the with the speed of using bare cloudkit records,

Oscar Gorog:

then? I think it's great. I think it's really fast. It's really easy to use once you get the hang of it. I mean, it took me like a month or two to create everything and test it all. And it was all quite confusing at first, because I don't have that much experience with online databases. But I got it in the end, and it works really well now.

Jeroen Leenarts:

So yeah, a lot of cool things that we can look forward to in WWDC. And I think there will be interesting topics to discuss, like after WWDC, and there's a lot of things going on online. Are there any? What's your preferred way to consume the updates from WWDC is the Arctic communities or specific forums or newsletter, that newsletter said you keep an eye on?

Oscar Gorog:

Yeah, I'm on Dave's newsletter on Paul Hudson's newsletter. But I usually just enjoy making a new Xcode project and just coding some new stuff. And watching sessions, I wake up at 3am with my brother and my dad, we always watch it in the morning. And usually we don't have time, because it's school in the morning for platforms that are the union, DC, I think we're gonna have time to watch that too, which is really exciting.

Jeroen Leenarts:

And that's the true keynote, right?

Oscar Gorog:

Yeah, cuz exams were meant to finish site. Lockdown was meant to finish a couple days ago on Friday, and exams were meant to start then. And if we had exams, were meant to be having exams this week, by June due to the lockdown being extended and being pushed back. And if we had them at the moment, the morning, which I would have woken up would have been like on exam day, and I would have had exams that morning, it would have been super stressful. And you know, I would have had a dilemma whether to wake up or

Jeroen Leenarts:

not. Okay.

Oscar Gorog:

So it's good. It's good. I'm at home now, can I just get the tribal stuff?

Jeroen Leenarts:

That's, that's the that's some weird way that like a lockdown can be a benefit, right? Yeah, that's right. So um, yeah, with that, I think it's time we start wrapping up, because we pretty much had an an interesting talk with, with somebody who got started with iOS development, or actually, Mac development, basically, Apple development, I should say, at a really young age, with some help from a friend was able to enter the student challenges with Apple and in 2020, you were able to actually come through on those challenges. And yeah, there's so much possibility still for the future. And who knows, in a couple years time, we'll, we'll meet again and you'll be like all in university and like growing a beard and all kinds of crazy stuff. So to people who want to get started with anything Apple related development, what's the best thing they can do?

Oscar Gorog:

Download this to playgrounds app on iPad or Mac now, and just go through the courses? Learn as much as you can. And then start watching some YouTube tutorials on how to build apps in Xcode.

Jeroen Leenarts:

Thanks for that Oscar and hope to see a lot of interesting stuff from you appear online in the future. And I wish you good luck with your studies. Thank you. And let's hope that this lockdown is over soon enough.

Oscar Gorog:

Thank you very much.

(Cont.) Oscar Gorog, a WWDC 2020 Student Challenge Winner