Teen Developers - Amit Kalra

Amit’s Workspace

Wow! This is our 14th developer interview, and the list to come is still long! I’m so glad it’s lasted this long and hope for it to continue far into the future! But in case you haven’t noticed, quite a few of the questions are repetitive. So that’s where I want you guys to come in! If you can think of anything you’d like to know about these developers, feel free to send your questions over to me. Thanks a ton!

Amit, could you start by telling us a little about yourself?

Hi, my name is Amit Nivedan Kalra. I’m 15 years old and a freshman in high school. I like to code, take photography, and just be involved with technology in any way.

What was your first experience developing? How did it pull you in?

The way I got into developing was interesting. I started off in ’09 when a friend of mine showed me a game called ROBLOX. At first it was just a game that I played. A couple of months later, I just got the idea to develop my own game. Around that time, I was interested in doing parkour. So I decided to make a game called Parkour City. It took time, and it was frustrating. But in the end, it pays off! I now have OVER half a MILLION visits on the game.

Do you have any apps you’ve published, or do you prefer playing with code for fun?

I actually code for fun, most of the time. I’m interested to release my apps in the App Store soon, but not now. And yes, I do actually have one game in the App Store. It’s called Apple Jumps. It started off trying to make a Flappy Bird clone by coding for fun and then I just decided to put it into the App Store. (Mostly because it’d be cool to have an app on the app store.)

Right now you’re learning Swift and Lua. What made you choose these languages? Do you see any parallels between them?

Well, I didn’t actually chose Lua. Lua is the only language you use to script games on ROBLOX. I did chose Swift over Objective C for iOS Development because it’s much easier to learn, shorter, and fun! Surprisingly there isn’t really a big difference between Swift and Lua. For example, if you want to print something in the console, for Swift it’d be : println(“Hello World”) and for Lua it’d be print(“Hello World!”). They’re both very easy to work with and exciting!

Where do you see yourself five years from now? Ten? Are you going to continue pursuing software development as a profession?

In 5 years I can see myself attending (MIT) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I want to continue software engineering as a profession so I will be getting my masters in Computer Science. In 10 years, I’ll probably be working at Apple as a Software Engineer.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Don’t ever quit. Even if things get real hard, just take a LOOOOOOONNNNGGGGGG break. And remember, don’t do things you’re not passionate for. Follow what you want to become.

If you’d like to contact Amit, he’s @AMITNKALRA on Twitter.

As always, feel free to contact Kaleb if you’d like to be featured. Posts come out Thursdays every two weeks.