12-Year-Old Thomas Suarez next Steve Jobs?

Kids are too smart these days. Twelve-year-old Thomas Suarez is in the sixth grade and already has two apps available at the app store, a talk on TED (video below) and is working on a startup company called CarrotCorp. He makes me look bad and I don’t like it. In sixth grade one should be worrying about the health risks of cafeteria food not the financial status of your company.

Suarez’s first published app, Earth Fortune (Free), told a person their fortune and colored the Earth according to this prediction. His second app was the successful Bustin Jieber ($0.99), a whack-a-mole game where you whack Justin Bieber instead of moles, though I still think the moles have a nicer face. The young student also made a point of saying that programming education is scarce and learning how to program apps is not as easy as finding someone to teach you how to play a sport or an instrument. He rectified this by starting an app club at his middle school and offers help to anyone (students and teachers alike) who has the ambition to make apps of their own. Not only is it important for students to be involved in programming but including teachers in this learning allows for them to use this same technology to teach their students. With the population of iPhone and iPad users growing rapidly, it is easy to see a future where class is taught using these resources and textbooks becoming a thing of the past. Aim high little one, all you have to do is drop out of an ivy league and you’ll no doubt become the next Steve Jobs.