Why the Granny Coder decided to make her first iPhone game aged 77 | Hacker News Reader

Why the Granny Coder decided to make her first iPhone game aged 77

pocketgamer.biz

59 pointsdejv17 comments

Very original marketing gimmick.

Edit: as if it wasn't obvious enough, check the hands in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZATuhCoJLc

Of course a story like this brings a lot of traffic to pocketgamer. It's not worth to check if it's true.

"I have a huge support from my three grandsons. Michal bough me an iPhone as I mentioned, then they gave me a Mac, because I had a Windows PC. One of them is studying IT at university, so he is my adviser sometimes. And all three of them are watching everything I create and give me feedback. They've also made the videos on my blog."

not that that means its not true, but still.

She knows how to code a game. She has learnt objective-c, Xcode, the iPhone sdk api and the chipmunk physics library. She also does her own graphics (a blog entry is titled 'How to polish your game', in two parts) with a style that is clearly made by a twentysomething and that would require a very sharp eye.

But she couldn't operate a video camera?

Heh, I wonder if "she" used my example iPhone + Chipmunk Physics project:

http://tlrobinson.net/blog/2008/02/21/chipmunk-physics-engin...

The inevitability of growing old scares me like few other things. My biggest consolation is that I should be able to keep creating no matter how old I get - and unlike other passions, this passion of ours only requires a sound mind, not necessarily a sound body.

I want to be like Marie when I grow up.

It's such a relief for those of us who share that fear. I stumbled upon this letter yesterday, it's a complaint that a 98 year old lady wrote to her bank's CEO. (http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art42630.asp)

These two ladies are an excellent example that age is not an impediment for doing things (or doing something about things...in the latter case).

Hmmm... the Internet seems to have helped develop in me a very strong level of cynicism such that I'd put the chances of this being genuine at < 5%, and the Granny Coder at about 40%

Unfortunately in some cases the mind deteriorates too, not just the body. I knew a 90+ year old women who was pretty sane, but after two years she became retarded. She was asking me something, I was answering and after 5-10 minutes she was asking the same question again.

Btw, I think that Grace Murray Hopper can be considered a model, too.

Oh, man. From the title I thought _why came back in a brand new geriatric form - Why the Granny Coder. It's going to be a long day.

http://www.whythegrannycoder.com is available if you're interested :-)

What a lady! This makes me feel ashamed for throwing in the towel with iPhone development simply because the method names were too verbose and hard to remember and the whole deployment profile/signing stuff.. :)

The things that annoy professional programmers are very different from the things that annoy "amateur" programmers. (I use quotes because I don't want to imply that this lady is not a good programmer or whatever. Her goals are to create a single fun game in her free time, so the things that annoy her are going to be different than what annoys someone who has to write a new "business app" every month.)

That's a great point - I hadn't thought of that. 10 years ago I just put up with and accepted a lot of weird stuff related to programming because I was pretty much a novice and just got on with it. Now I've reached a point where I can question things.. just a bit too much though, it seems!

Just like in this graph http://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lisa-simps...

+1 makes me hang my head in shame.

Inspiring. Another cogent example of how the reasons we give for not wholeheartedly pursuing a project challenge are really just excuses. I look forward to buying and playing her iPhone puzzle game.

http://grannycoder.blogspot.com/

I must say, I love how she starts her posts with "Hello, kids." I was as first offended, at least until I reconsidered what we look like from her perspective.

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