WWDC 2008

My application letter

The WWDC (World-Wide Developer's Conference) is an event hosted by Apple that offers over 150 seminars relating to OS X and the iPhone. In the past, the conference has had over 5000 attendees, over 1000 Apple software engineers, and a keynote by Steve Jobs among other notable events. This year, those numbers will only witness an increase in number and Steve Jobs' keynote will likely reveal the long-awaited App Store for the iPhone.

Each year the WWDC grants a small number of scholarships to students. This year, there are 400 scholarships available, each worth approximately $1300 USD. I have just recently received news that I have received one such scholarship and will be attending the conference in San Francisco this June.

Why did you choose this major?

Eight years have passed since I wrote my first line of code on the TI83+. Since that day I have had an unending passion for software development which has led naturally to pursuing a degree in Computer Science. I chose my major to better understand the theoretical backbone of software development and broaden my understanding of a variety of related fields.

What work experience did you find the most fulfilling and why?

The University of Waterloo offers a strong co-op program which allowed me to dedicate three four-month work terms at Sony Creative Software. During my employment as a software developer I was privileged to develop several key features for shipping products. One such product was Photo Go!.

My involvement with Photo Go! involved implementing printing, photo editing and full-screen slideshow features that involved a large amount of UI design and implementation. I also developed a custom tree view control that provided the user with intuitive feedback for drag-and-drop actions by intelligently highlighting the nodes that could support the data type being dragged. This line of work was very fulfilling and has allowed me to grow a passion for intelligent user interface design and implementations.

If you have not attended before, please describe your reasons for wanting to attend the conference.

Attending WWDC 2008 will allow me, as a new OS X software developer, to gain valuable insights into developing for both OS X and the iPhone. I wish to attend the conference in order to strengthen my knowledge about the development practices for Cocoa and Objective-C 2.0. Also, as a Windows developer with over five years of experience I have a solid background in software development that will aid me in absorbing as much information at WWDC as possible.

What type of development work do you do?

A large proportion of my spare time is devoted to game development. As a hobbyist game developer I have created eight demos that have received recognition in game design competitions. My current project is a light-weight cross-platform framework that I intend on using to port my games to OS X and other platforms. Already, I have a variety of demos that function on both Windows and OS X.

I also have experience in web-page design involving PHP and MySQL. I strongly believe that, as an independent software developer, it is crucial to be able to design a functional website that advertises my skills. As such, I have created numerous sites both from the ground up and as modifications to existing systems.

What are your career plans? Are you considering a career in software or hardware development?

As an experienced software developer I intend on further exploring the realm of software development both professionally and independently. The coming two years of my life are devoted to education and co-op, and so I will be focusing heavily on gathering a large set of skills from a variety of companies through co-op while learning about a diverse set of Psychology, Computer Science, and Mathematics. After graduating, I intend on pulling together a small team of strong developers and designers and starting a game development studio.