For 30 hours every week, in time squeezed in between a busy school day and his bedtime, 12-year-old Sebastian Gronow works hard. He reads pages and pages of computer code, and then writes a test for himself – making sure he has learnt what he has just read.
He then puts his new found skills to use, creating gaming apps for smartphones.
“I saw a TV show about a boy in England who made an app,” Sebastian says, from an office at his parent’s workplace.
“I thought, ‘I want to do that’, so I asked my Dad to buy me a book on coding so I could get the skills to build my own app.”
Sebastian clearly isn’t your average 12-year-old. For his debut app on iTunes, Happy Dactyls, he wrote over 40,000 lines of computer code.
“I look at the code, and it all looks like algebra to me,” admits Sebastian’s dad, Russell. “Neither his mum or I have any idea of how it works, we both work in hospitality, it’s just his own hobby that has grown.”
After writing the code for his first app, Sebastian had to be approved by Apple as a developer, no mean feat for an 11-year-old, as he was then. Apple checks each app for its usability and function levels, making sure it adheres to certain standards.
“They rejected me four times,” Sebastian says. “So I kept going back and tweaking the app where they wanted me to, and finally it was approved,” he says with a broad grin.
Sebastian’s game is a traditional battle of good vs. evil, where the Happy Dactyls aim to outwit the evil Dactyls during each of the 20 levels.
“It’s a lot of levels, but it’s a lot of fun,” Sebastian explains enthusiastically, adding that kids as young as four could play his game.
Sebastian’s dad couldn’t be prouder, even though his son’s success has forced him to admit he knows next to nothing about technology.
“I work in a hotel, and Sebastian asked all the guys around here for advice – some of them have built websites – and he took everything they said on board,” says Russell.
“When he puts his mind to something … he clearly doesn’t give up!”
In between app building, Sebastian plays basketball, and unlike many of his peers, likes mathematics the most, explaining that code has a lot of math skills involved in its application.
“I like art too – I want to learn how to draw my designs (for characters) on the computer myself … at the moment my cousin helps me,” Sebastian says.
So what’s next for Australia’s youngest techpreneur?
“I spend every day on computers, because I love them so much,” Sebastian says, “I just want to keep building apps. Another game, or a puzzle app, I’m not sure.”
One thing that is for sure is that nothing is going to stand in the way of this tech-savvy year six student. Watch this space.
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