Raymond Huffman, a sophomore at Manhasset High School, is a rising app developer for many different programs. Below is an interview with Raymond about how he got started and his up-to-date accomplishments.

Indian Ink: What motivated you to start coding and programming apps?

Raymond: I have always been interested in how things like computers work. I discovered the program “Scratch” in elementary school, which is a drag and drop programming system. I began to push its limits and decided that I wanted to get into real programming. I went to CTY over the summer to learn more about computer science and programming basics. Then I basically taught myself how to program for specific platforms, such as the Pebble smart watch.

Indian Ink: By teaching yourself, do you mean through the Internet?

Raymond: Yeah, through the Internet and books.

Indian Ink: I know that you developed an app for the Pebble smart watch. Will you tell us about the app and the competition you entered?

Raymond: Okay, so the Pebble was really the first smart watch to be released, and it is open source, meaning that anyone can see the code that makes the watch work and can easily make their own programs to run on the watch.

Over the summer I received an email saying that Pebble had partnered with XDA Developers, which is an online developer’s forum, to host an app development challenge. The competition would be divided into two phases, proposals and then the actual programming. After a bit of cogitating, I came up with the idea for my app, “School Schedule.” It works by reading the user’s class schedule and comparing that to the current time to determine what class it currently is and how much time is left in the period. I submitted this idea to the competition and was one of the 20 people selected to actually develop the app. Luckily, the watch is coded in C, which is a programming language that I am familiar with.

I developed and submitted my app for the second phase along with 11 others who had actually completed their apps (the others must have given up). Sadly, I did not win, but the three winners each received a trip to California to meet the developers of the watch.

Indian Ink: Wow, that’s very impressive. Were you going against many other adults?

Raymond: Yes. All my competitors were experienced programmers. This is a link for the winners: http://forum.xda-developers.com/pebble/pebble-development

Indian Ink: All in all, how many hours do you put into programming/coding in a normal week?

Raymond: Balancing homework and other activities, I try to put in anywhere between 1-3 hours a weekend.

Indian Ink: What is the hardest part about it?

Raymond: The hardest part about programming for me is definitely learning and remembering syntax. For example, in programming language C you must have a semicolon at the end of every line. Miss even one little mark and then the whole program will not work. Also, many times I’ll know what I need the program to do, but I’ll make a small error and maybe a half hour later find out that the whole program doesn’t work. At that point you would have to search through the whole program line by line to find the error.

Indian Ink: What is your favorite thing about it?

Raymond: My favorite part is definitely coming up with elegant algorithms that make programs work extremely efficiently and solving problems in an unconventional way.

Indian Ink: Do you plan to continue programming/coding after high school?

Raymond: As of right now, I plan on majoring in computer science in college.

Indian Ink: Lastly, do you have any advice for new app developers or others interested in programming and code?

Raymond: When I first started, I thought that everything had already been done, that there was no program I could possibly write that hadn’t been written before. I now know that’s completely wrong.  Computer programming opens the door to infinite possibilities, and its impossible for everything to have been done.

My advice is to be creative, solve problems in unusual ways, write programs that are unique, and get started by buying a programming book, which is a much easier way to learn than through the Internet.