IAmA a 13 year old who developed a mobile app that helps speech impaired people to communicate. AMA

It's really cool to see young programmers providing useful apps! ETA for an Android version?

The Android version will probably not come out for a while. I am only now learning how to code for Android and rewriting HandySpeech for Android will take some time. In the meantime, there's some incentive to get an Apple device! :)

Why is the app $29.99? That seems pretty steep if the goal is to help people with difficulty speaking to be understood. Are there production or licensing costs that I'm missing?

Most apps that do (kinda) the same thing this app does cost over $200, so for the amount of features it has, this is a bargain. And this app can change peoples lives, so 29.99 is a small price to pay for that. If you are a registered institution, you can buy bulk copies at a lower cost as well.

I thought when you submit an app, Apple has final say in what the price will be. How much say did you have when determining the price?

Huh?

Apple can't set the price. You do. They have guidelines etc, but how else do you think some of those $999 apps got priced that way.

You have to price it so you are making a profit.

Profit is actually not so much here. After you take away the chunk that the SDKs take off after each purchase, you are left with very little going into your bank account. But yes, we did choose the price.

Has it helped your sister?

Unfortunately, it has not. My sister does not know how to write, nor does she have any language skills other than the occasional "HI!" or "Mommy".

Thank you for doing this AMA and for developing such a useful app!

Does your sister use any other apps designed to help non-verbal autistic users communicate? I'm not too familiar with them, but I saw a 60 minutes episode about it.

Second question: I have a 9 year-old son. He's really into minecraft. How can I encourage him to go into coding other than setting him up on codeacademy, etc? I know a little but not enough to teach him myself. What is the most motivating aspect for you to learn to code?

No problem! My sister is very mentally challenged and most if not all autistic communication devices will not help her. As for the second question, the motivation I get for coding plugins is by playing on other servers. When I go onto a server and I see really cool custom coded plugins, it makes me want to code something similar like that. Unfortunatly, I think your son is a bit too young for coding, but maybe in the future, you can teach him.

You should try learning Android using the UDemy apps offered on the Apple store. They have definitely taught me a lot and are extremely useful. They also have other apps that teach you many other coding languages.

Oh thanks! I will definitely try them out.

I find this very interesting since I am starting to learn C++ on my own through some book I got online. I have some questions: 1- How did u learn C? 2- What does your dad do? (probably related to you learning) 3- How long did it take you? 4- Any suggestions for new programmers? (books, etc)

So I will answer the first 2 questions as one. I learned Objective - C with some help from my dad and from YouTube. My dad is a software engineer who works with C# and Sharepoint, but he has never programmed in Objective - C so this was new for him too. 3rd question is here - http://bit.ly/17Sxfvk 4th question. I don't think books are the way to go because you pay for them and they give you a set amount of knowledge. I would watch YouTube videos and when you get stuck with something, just search it on the web. There are a ton of resources to help you there.

Wow, this seems like a really awesome creation of yours. I have two questions. Firstly, how did you learn to code?, what resources did you use etc. Secondly, what's your youtube channel called?

I would watch YouTube videos and when I got stuck with something, I would just search it on the web. There are a ton of resources to help you there. There is more info in my previous comments.

What percentage of the app did you write, and what percentage did your Dad?

I wrote most of the app and my dad only helped with the most challenging parts.

Which would be the handwriting recognition then, which is pretty much all the program outside the speech function. But really I bet there are library's for both those functions so all that's left is integration and if you didn't do that then you pretty much did nothing.

No need to be harsh. I used 2 SDKs, but gave them both a substantial rewrite so they could work as I wanted. If it looks easy to you, you try to do it. Also, there are a TON more features outside of the SDKs. If you want to take a look, I can give you a promo code.

What would I do with a promo code either you have github with the app or rewritten libraries submitted or you have nothing.

Troll, troll go away. Don't come back another day.

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Please be nice, no one likes a troll / jealous person. I did not put it on GitHub so people like you won't copy it. You don't see Apple puttin iOS on GitHub, do you?

First of all your application is mostly dependent on other peoples libraries. So if all you do is leech others people work and don't contribute anything then you are scum or you didn't make any real changes.

Secondly you don't need to worry about copying if you use appropriate license, herp derp, http://choosealicense.com/

Thirdly why would you want to make a proprietary application to help disable people? Why would you price is at $30. Do you hate disabled people or just like milking them for sweet sweet cash?

Fourthly I don't use code script kiddies make plus I can get like what %90+ percent of your source-code from the libraries. If I cared I could just reverse engineer it anyway a completely legal and easy thing to do. But I don't because I don't care.

Lastly how can you even compare an OS to an iphone application? But here you can see a lot of software to help disabled people is open source since people care.

Also love how you say please be nice then passively call me a troll or jealous.

How about you be nice and stop being a fucking scum that charges $30 for an application that is %90+ other peoples libraries to help disabled people.

Listen, first of all, I am still a kid. Even if everything you said is true (1% is) I still have a long life ahead. Second, most disabled helping software costs $100 - $200 dollars, so my app is really cheap in terms of features vs money. I mean, do you think I have the skill and knowledge to program a speech synthesis when giant companies have been developing one for 10 years? And the handwriting recognition got a rewrite anyway. Finally, why are you hating on me? Are you really immature like that? I mean, if you are an adult, then woah. If you are a kid, maybe that is a bit more reasonable, you know being jealous. Please, stop arguing and just move on with your life.

"My dad designed it, but a 13 year old designing it gets a lot more press and lands me on my local news station."

• HandySpeech

(Sorry to hate on you but that's all I can think here)

Thats totally not true, man. And even if my dad tried to design it, he does not know Objective - C, so he would not have gotten far.

If you can pick any two celebrity voices for this, who would they be?

Morgan Freeman and Sylvester Stallone. Love those actors.

IMPALED PEOPLE?!

Oh my god, you fucker, you're helping vampires and you don't even realize this!? How is that possible?!

I think you should look more closely at the title, lol.

Take your time to answer these, but I´d aprecciate it.

• How would you imagine the perfect 14th birthday party? (Mine was, Terminator 2 and lots of energy drinks :)

• May I use you as a role model (by which I mean to tell your story to my future classes when I get to be paid to teach, somewhat soon hopefully... they would be pretty close in age)

As a side note, I will bookmark your app, because I can think of at least three other ways to do some some playful classroom activities for any language subject with it, other than its original purpose.

However, it may please you to know that Swiss schools have a relativly large budget to supply special needs children. If there is any chance they can be schooled with everybody else, they will, even if it means paying a special needs educator, speech educator and physiotherapist.

So I will definitely bookmark your app as well, to aid in future encounters with pupils of mine, who may be helped by this simple yet genuis application.

On further thought, why don´t you go advertise your app subtly in /r/teachers?

The perfect birthday? Hmm, probably a ticket to a WWDC (Apple dev event) and a sign up to a technology school which taught you how to code anything. Yeah, sure I would be very honored if you used me as a model. Also I would appreciate you tell me if you post anything on the web about me. Just out of curiosity, you know. And yeah, I will probably post something on /r/teachers.

You mention that you have a YouTube channel, what is it?

www.youtube.com/ejzeiberg and my IGN is MasterEjzz. (Planning on changing that for obvious reasons) Here is the HandySpeech YouTube account as well - www.youtube.com/HandySpeech

Very cool! You are very well spoken and bright for being so young.

Thanks!

So i would love to get into developing software. (Im 14) what advice do you have? Also did you make much money from your app; if so what did you do with it?

My advice is to just keep going at it. When I first started programming, and I have heard it from other people too, I was VERY intimidated by programming. Then I started learning more and it became more and more interesting and fun to me and also it did not seem so intimidating anymore. Also, don't program something if you don't want to do it. Imo, programming is for fun and to make a product that will be useful or creative. Unless you work for a company who assigns you a task, program what you want!

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Hi Jack, I finally know your Reddit. This app took all summer to create if you count the time that I spent learning how to program and watching YouTube videos on it.

What programming code would you recommend somebody learning first? I am looking to get started, but have no idea which to pick. Thanks

Not the OP, but here you go: /r/learnprogramming

Read the FAQ's, pick a language, have fun.

So this AmA has taught me some stuff too! I did not know about that subreddit, thanks.

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Well right now I am in middle school so they force us to take all the classes, but in highschool I am planning to take a lot of coding and computer courses.

You seem like a great guy. Keep up the good work!

A little background on myself I'm 14 and have been studying programming for 7 years. I have done lots of things from Python scripts that sort files to Minecraft cheats and more recently reverse engineering applications in x86 assembly and soon game development.

A few questions.

• How many programming languages do you know?
• If applicable what IDE's do you use?
• How old were you when you first started programming?

Thank you! I know Objective - C and Java and I am learning web development right now. For Obj - C I use Xcode because that is the best IDE for apple programming. For Java, I use Eclipse. When I first started programming, I was 11.

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Thanks! What do you program?

Speaking as someone of an older generation who looks sadly at your generation, and their apparent lack of interest in programming, and how to use a computer beyond surfing the web/playing a computer game/reading facebook, to you I first say this:

Thank you. There should be more like you.

No problem. I also agree that there should be more people, especially kids, who know how to code.