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SINGAPORE, Feb 9 – He’s made headlines for his computer programming skills, but nine-year-old Singaporean Lim Ding Wen is only allowed to play with his desktop for just two hours a day, and provided he’s finished his homework.
Ding Wen, who started using a computer at the age of two, became a celebrity of sorts after writing an iPhone application called Doodle Kids, which lets users to draw by touching their fingers to the screen, then clearing it by shaking the phone.
The application, available on Apple’s iTunes store, currently has more than 27,000 users worldwide.
“Programming is easy, I just have natural interest in it,” the fourth-grader told Reuters. “It’s fun.”
Lim’s father, Lim Thye Chean, is a chief technology officer for a local firm, and the boy grew up surrounded by computers.
Lim said his son first asked about programmes two years ago, and he started him off on an old, yellow, 16-bit Apple II GS computer, hoping it would be easy enough for him.
Since then, Ding Wen has mastered some six programming languages and completed some 20 projects.
“Ding Wen is not a genius. He just works hard at what he does. Anybody with an interest can do programming,” Lim said.
Ding Wen’s skills may be way beyond his years — he’s writing another iPhone game — but he still lives an average nine-year-old’s life, and that means homework and house rules.
“Two hours of computer a day and only after homework,” the boy said sulkily.
His mother, Zhao Yan, says he must also do well at school.
“He does not need to be in the top three, just the top ten will do,” she said. Last year, he came 10th in his class.
And while computers, and games such as Sega’s “Sonic the Hedgehog”, are among his favourite activities, Ding Wen also likes cycling and playing with his pet mealworm James.
He is also determined not to let fame get to his head.
“I don’t want to become famous,” Ding Wen said in his room, where laminated newspaper articles about him are displayed on the walls. “I just want to be good at my programming.”
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