12-year-old kid develops Windows Phone 7 apps

By Tom Warren, on 28th Feb 11 9:17 pm with 9 Comments

Windows Phone 7 development is so easy that even 12 year-old kids can get involved.

Microsoft’s Channel 9 team posted a video interview of Elliot Forde on Monday, a 12-year old kid that develops Windows Phone apps. Forde is a self taught Windows Phone developer who has two apps to his name. Channel 9 stopped by Forde’s home to see how he codes his applications.

Forde was just 11 and a half when he started developing. He started small with console applications and stepped it up to Windows forms. Forde gradually moved onto XNA coding with his Zune HD and Silverlight in preparation for Windows Phone. Today Forde has two applications in the Windows Phone Marketplace. The first is a Time Tracker application that allows user to store clients, dates, times and descriptions as intelligent notes. The second is Richochet, a game for Windows Phone. Forde has created 30 levels and used his own piano to author sounds for his game. He also uses paint.net to create graphics for the game.

It appears that Forde is the youngest Windows Phone 7 developer out there. Let us know if you’ve heard of an equally smart kid.

  • http://www.Nave360.com Sebastian Gorgon

    when i was 12 i was hacking GTA 2 lol

  • http://twitter.com/iamthady TOSIN

    brilliant

  • Wourelia

    By looking at the developer comments (//…..) in his code, it seems like he modified an existing game source. That would make him just another script kiddie.
    However, I’m not an expert at WP7 programming so I could be wrong.

    • brian

      you would be mostly wrong. when you create a new games project in visual studio you get a basic template project with comments telling you what code goes were for your game. Those are some of the comments you see in the video.

  • http://techvirtuoso.com Michael Stanclift

    “I’ve always used Windows PCs” … since, like, forever!?

  • http://twitter.com/walktovanish Austin Ritchie

    I didn’t have access to a good computer at 12… but when I was 14 I was coding on the PSP. =D

  • http://www.twitter.com/astroXP astroX

    That kid doesn’t look 12 to me lol. This is actually great to know, specially when some certain Birdie game developer company said a few weeks ago it was HARD to develop for WP7, angry liars. I did feel like the boy was talking very robotic and somehow scripted :/ Btw … I loved the fact his room is underground!!!

  • Vawdka

    If my parents were loaded and could afford to buy me all those fancy “toys” and “tools” I could code at 12 too. Oh wait, I was coding at 7 or 8 in Qbasic on a DOS machine. Nobody wrote a story about me, I had a poor family and I was scavenging parts from dying computers as long as I can remember, just to have something to use. You have to pay 99 bucks just to test games on a W7 Phone. Otherwise you do it on a emulator. Can’t tell me he paid for all that stuff himself.

  • Asaiza2000

    Jealous much? Jeez people just be happy for the kid, he has a bright future! Why turn this into something about YOU??