Apple CEO Tim Cook has congratulated Hana, a 9-year-old Indian app developer based in Dubai. Cook replied to an email of the young girl who developed the Hanas app. She, one of the youngest app developers in the world, informed the Apple boss that she was the youngest iOS app developer.
Her parents were delighted because they saw Cook's response as support for the assertions she had made in her email. Her father says that, because so many children are creating apps, Apple has the means to verify such claims. He reveals that Hana's elder sister Leena Fathima, 10, is her coding teacher.
The young girl claims that, in order to construct the storytelling app that enables parents to record stories in their own voices for their children, she had to write 10,000 lines of code. She watched a documentary that gave her the idea. Parents, before getting busy at work, can record stories for their children to listen to as they go off to sleep.
Both Hana and Leena are self-taught coders who were motivated by their parents. Leena has created the Lehanas website, which teaches children about words, colours and animals. Leena included a link to the Chief Minister's fund on her website when floods ravaged Kerala.
Hana hopes to work for Tim Cook one day while Leena hopes to go to the US for her future studies. Leena enjoys coding because it gives her a rush to solve challenges and watch her codes come to life. The sisters' ultimate goal, however, is to improve society and make people happy.
The sisters have been primarily homeschooled by their parents. Leena described how their involvement in coding began when their father, a project management consultant, urged their mother to study coding to assist him with his startup.
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