Saskatoon student, 13, among winners of Apple-run coding challenge

Saskatoon student Drake Jordan, who at 13 years old was just eligible to apply this year, was one of 350 worldwide winners of Apple’s Swift Student Challenge.

The challenge is an annual worldwide coding competition for students that happens ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which ran this week.

Jordan’s app, Sway, lets people see movement and colour together on their screens, sharing one type of synesthesia.

He recently spoke with the StarPhoenix about the Apple challenge and his new app.

Q: Can you tell me about your app?

A: Sway is an app that lets people experience synesthesia, a phenomenon where two senses get combined in the brain and trigger each other. I have synesthesia, so I really wanted other people to be able to experience it.

When I saw that Apple was holding the student challenge, I thought it’d be really fun to make something that would help other people be able to experience it. I hope they are able to see what it’s like for people who experience synesthesia and how it affects people’s everyday lives.

Q: How did you learn about the Swift Student Challenge?

A: I found out about it a few years ago when I watched my first WWDC. That’s when I started learning how to code. And the Swift Student Challenge takes place right around then. That’s when I found out about it. And this year I made my first project.

It was really exciting when I finally was able to apply to the challenge.

Q: And what was the challenge experience like?

A: It was really fun because they give you a lot of creative freedom to create whatever you want inside your Swift Playgrounds app. And finally submitting that and seeing that I won was really fun.

Q: How does it feel to be among the challenge winners who got to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook?

A: Knowing there’s so few challenge winners, especially in Canada and that I’m one of the youngest ones was really exciting. There are 350 winners in total and then 12 were selected for the interview with Tim Cook.

All of the Apple PR team had kept the Tim Cook surprise a complete secret. So it was really amazing when I finally got to meet him. And just seeing how much he cares about the developer community and all the students was really magical.

Overall, this whole thing has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life so far.

Q: Will your app be available to the public?

A: I want to work on my app for maybe another month or two, just refining it and adding a few more forms of synesthesia to it. Then I think it’d be really fun to release it as a free app on the app store.

Q: What do you hope to do next with your coding skills?

A: I’d love to keep learning more about the programming language and making more apps, and eventually putting them on the app store. But further in the future, I’d like to go to university for computer science and then get a job in tech.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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