Teen Developers at WWDC 2012 Enjoyed Skittles and Bean Bag Chairs

The Wall Street Journal details the stories of a few teen developers (out of the 150 free passes given out) that were treated to attend WWDC 2012 thanks to Apple. This year marked the inaugural opening of the event to 13-17 year old developers by Apple, part of their WWDC Student Scholarships.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s VP of Marketing noted developers have continued to get younger and younger:

“We used to think that inviting students as young as 18 years old was great..

[…]

…We would get emails after the developer conference from students, 16, 15, 14 years old, saying I already have X number of apps in the app store. I’m a developer. Can I take part in this too?”

One of these teens involved was enthusiastic Ryan Cohen, aged 15. He did the smart thing–he rushed up to meet Tim Cook immediately after the WWDC keynote:

Ryan Cohen, 15, whose mother raised the $2,500 needed to cover his travel expenses by appealing to her friends on Facebook, said his fellow programmers gave him tips about topics like “UITableViews,” a way of listing items on a screen. But the highlight for Mr. Cohen was meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook after he rushed the stage following Mr. Cook’s keynote address and appealed to a sympathetic security guard.

“It was an once-in-a-lifetime thing,” said Mr. Cohen, who has a photo of himself and Mr. Cook on his iPhone.

You have got to love these teen entrepreneurs. My favourite line was from 17 year old Andrew Rosenblum, after noting his iOS apps have helped him generate thousands of dollars:

“Some of my friends work at an ice-cream parlor,”

Check out the rest of article here on the WSJ. After, sign your kid up for an app building course and wait for the cheques to roll in (hey, somebody has to pay for college).