Google Developers Blog: DevKids: An inside look at the kids of DevFest

DevKids: An inside look at the kids of DevFest

Monday, November 25, 2019

his tips on coding

Ider, an 11-year-old developer from MoroccoDevFest Agadir

Selin, a 13-year-old developer from Istanbul who was named the European Digital Girl of the Year by AdaAwards, joined the DevFest family last season. Recently, at a DevFest event in Istanbul, she told the story of how she became fascinated with robotics through a presentation titled, My Journey of Building Robots. With a passion for Python, Java, and Ruby, she explained how she is using her skills to build a robotic guide dog for the blind. She hopes that with the help of technology, she can open up a new, more accessible world for those with disabilities.

Radostin, a 13-year-old programmer from Bulgaria, joined the DevFest family last season as a speaker and is now a core member of the DevFest Organizing Team. Recently, he created an app for the team that gathers feedback on different DevFest events.

Previously, he gave a talk at DevFest Sofia on how he built an app that teaches people to play chess on Google Assistant. The young developer also spoke of how his aunt introduced him to coding and how watching her program inspired him to learn Java, Kotlin, C #, Python, Dart, and C ++. He ended his presentation recounting long nights, spent watching YouTube videos, in search of anything he could get his hands on to learn. Radostin has inspired his DevFest family to believe they can learn anything, anywhere, at anytime.

Artash (12-years-old) and Arushi (9-years-old), are a brother-sister programing team from Canada. At DevFest Toronto, they showcased their very-own facial recognition robot that uses Machine Learning to Detect Facial Emotions. Their presentation was complete with live demonstrations where their robot analyzed fellow DevFest speakers and gave physical responses to their emotions. The two up-and-coming programmers also described how they went about creating their own ML algorithm to build the robot.

What inspired them to start such a project? Space travel. Artash and Arushi believe that as astronauts embark on longer space missions, it’s important to build tools that can monitor their mental health. One day, they hope their robot will accompany astronauts on the first trip to Mars.