By Sade Tavangarian
At 13-years-old, Cameron Cohen ’16 has already successfully created an iPhone application, and donated most of the proceeds from the application to the University of California, Los Angeles Mattel Children’s Hospital.
The seventh grader created the “iSketch
” application that allows buyers to create and draw doodles through touch screen finger painting, coloring, and sketching.
Cohen earned $20,000 from his application sales within months, but decided to give his proceeds away.
“I decided to donate to the UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital because during the month of March in fifth grade I had a benign tumor, Cohen said. “I was fortunate enough to have my iPod and iTouch which distracted me through the time, but I realized a lot of kids didn’t have any Apple products to distract them.”
Cohen used the $20,000 from application sales to purchase Apple products such as laptops, iPhones, iPod nanos and iTouches for the patients to enjoy during their stays.
Cohen’s interest in computer programming sparked last summer when he took a computer programming course at Harvard-Westlake Upper School with Chris Gragg. He also took courses at Ivy Tech on general computer programming and web design.
Cohen was always interested in drawing applications during his spare time, although he claims he’s not the best artist.
“I looked online and all the good drawing applications ranged between $5-10,” he said. “All the cheap drawing applications were free. I wanted to create an affordable drawing application because I don’t think it’s worth it to spend that much money on it.”
iSketch, Cohen’s first iphone programming attempt, took him two to three months to complete.
“I was always home because I couldn’t play sports due to my surgery,” Cohen said. “I watched apple video tutorials online, audidated tapes, and watched iPod programming classes from Stanford U Online and worked through their course.”
Within three weeks, Apple accepted Cohen’s application and it was an instantaneous success. He created an update for iSketch where users can share their drawings via Facebook and Twitter, but Apple rejected his idea.
“I’m mad at Apple for rejecting my application,” he said. “I am now learning how to create a web service like Facebook or Twitter. What I like about programming languages is that no one can approve or reject your ideas like Apple does. It’s a lot more open.”
