Meet the youngest developer at Microsoft's Windows 8 AppFest

14-year old Rahul, a class-IX student has developed a 2-D graphics creator and editor which helps in creating art

Last Friday, around 4.30 pm when the hall where Microsoft was holding its non-stop coding contest was bustling with activities, Rahul Dominic, somehow managed to reach the venue. It’s because the 14-year old had to wait until his school hour is over to come to the venue.

After writing complex software codes throughout the night, Rahul’s application was ready by the morning next day. He had banked upon a common problem faced by most of the school children to develop an application, Duco Graphics Suites. This helps anyone to create visually appealing images and designs on their PC or device with the help of sensors (gyroscope and touch sensors).

Rahul’s Duco Graphics Suites was one of the 300 applications that have cleared the quality test by Microsoft’s Application Excellence Labs, the first step for any application to get into the Windows 8 App Store.

According Microsoft sources, some 700 fully-completed applications were developed at the AppFest which has now made it to the Guinness Book of World record for the ‘most participants in a software development marathon in one location’.

“As a student, I know many of my friends not good at creating art. A couple of months ago, I was experimenting with graphic algorithms. One of those algorithms was the foundation for this application, Duco Graphics Suite which is a 2D graphics creator and editor. While I am terrible at art, this application helped me create something beautiful,” said Rahul, a standard-IX student at National Public School (NPS), Koramangala in Bangalore.

This is, however, not the first application developed by Rahul for any platform. He has already developed 4-5 applications for Windows 7 and Android platforms for which he is getting paid also for every download. Son of a Finance professional working with Tata Consultancy Services, Rahul says whatever he has earned from his applications has been kept in the bank.

Rahul says he started learning programming languages at the age of 10. Most of the programming languages such as Java, C++ and c-shop, Rahul learnt at home. However, only for C-programming, he had joined NIIT for sometimes.

On what prompted him to develop application for Windows 8 platform, Rahul says he likes programming on Windows platform. “It is very adaptable,” he says.

Rahul aims to become a software development professional after finishing his studies.