Retired banker Masako Wakamiya was frustrated by the lack of mobile games that catered to the elderly, who have a tougher time keeping up with the action-packed games that are popular with teens. So the 82-year-old from Japan started taking online tutorials to learn how to write software code.
“I didn’t see any apps for the elderly, so I decided to create my own,” Wakamiya told Fortune.
Wakamiya, who first started using computers when she was 60-years-old, ultimately created a game in March that is based on the Japanese doll festival, Hinamatsuri, a holiday that celebrates the health and well-being of girls. And to appeal to older players, its pace is slow and its narrator speaks slowly.
Wakamiya will be the oldest developer attending WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference that starts Monday in San Jose, Calif. Like many of her fellow attendees, Wakamiya’s free app, called Hinadan, is available in Apple’s App Store, and she is eager to create more.
In contrast, the youngest attendee at this’s year’s WWDC is Yuma Soerianto, a 10-year old boy from Melbourne, Australia who started coding at age six by following online courses on Code.org and from Stanford University that he found on Apple iTunes U, which provides free college courses online. In four years, he has created four apps for Apple’s App Store, including Weather Duck, a weather app for kids.
During his nearly 20-hour journey to San Francisco for the conference, Soerianto created another app that lets users easily calculate the sales tax on what they’re thinking of buying.
Wakamiya and Soerianto are attending WWDC this year as part of an Apple scholarship program that gives hundreds of free tickets to developers worldwide who create apps for Apple devices. Apple has been making a big effort to increase diversity at WWDC, which like most tech conferences, has mostly attended by white and Asian males.
This year’s WWDC is the most international yet, according to Apple, and has the most students from elementary, middle and high schools. But the company declined to provide any numbers around the increase in international attendees or students.
Still. Apple feels it’s making progress.
“I feel like we are really starting to making a change,” Esther Hare, Apple’s senior director of developer marketing at Apple, said in an interview with Fortune.
At this era when every big tech firm employees age median roam around at 34, Wakamiya is busy leaving ageist naysayers in the dust. In the months since Apple CEO, Tim Cook called Wakamiya the “world’s oldest app developer” in attendance at an annual Worldwide Developers Conference, the Tokyo native’s spotlight has only grown.
In Wakamiya’s app, Hinadan users have to put dolls in the correct positions – a task which is much harder than it sounds, requiring memorization of the complex arrangements and memorizing dolls colors.
Wakamiya said her ultimate goal of life is to come up with “other apps that can entertain older people and help transmit to young people the culture and traditions we old people possess”.
“Most old people have abandoned the idea of learning, but the fact that some are starting [again] is not only good for them but for the country’s economy,” said Wakamiya.
“Most old people have abandoned the idea of learning, but the fact that some are starting [again] is not only good for them but for the country’s economy,” said Wakamiya.
Wakamiya thus proves there is no end to learning a determined person could very easily do whatever he/she want, and she being 84+ is inspiring us the much younger generation to be determined to fulfill our goals.
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