Sitting in his room for hours on end exploring the internet and teaching himself about coding, Matthew Turk, sophomore at Parker, has been coding since the age of eight. Over the past seven years he has been hatching app ideas and testing them out with users.

In the Seventh grade he developed Bubblesurge. “It is an arcade game,” Turk said, “and it served me well to learn the process of publishing an app.” His second app is called Euler’s Number. “Euler is an irrational number like Pi,” Turk said, “and the app is supposed to help people memorize digits of Euler.” The Euler app, modelled after a calculator, makes it simple to input numbers to help the user memorize some of the infinite digits of Euler.

“My third app is called Astrophacts,” said Turk, “and it started out as part of a science project which used astrophacts.com, and I just decided to make an accompanying app.”

Turk has tried to expand his exposure in the tech arena by frequently approaching prospective app users such as The Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization which promotes the study of space.

“When I was twelve I learned HTML,” Turk said, “but I did not start programming again until Seventh grade.” Turk then attended workshops on how to make websites, and his interest continued to grow until he began publishing his own apps.

“Matthew Turk is an exceptional coder,” sophomore Ian Shayne said, “I remember playing his game Bubblesurge. It was a very professionally developed app.”

Sophomore Rohan Jain agrees with Shayne about Turk’s abilities. “Matthew is very proactive with his app development,” Jain said. “He made a commitment, and I also know he develops websites and apps, so he is technologically savvy.”

Turk spends a lot of time bringing his ideas to fruition, going through many steps before publishing one of his apps. “When I have a feasible idea for an iOS app, I research the idea to see if it already exists, a patent already exists, or if there is a large enough market for the concept to grow,” Turk said. “I design the app in an application on my laptop, such as Sketch 3, and use Apple’s Xcode to program all of my iOS apps start to finish.”

In addition to developing apps, Turk also talks to other coders and goes to coding events. “I went to my first hackathon, and I also learned Objective-C online so that I could program iOS apps.”

Turk was also able to learn coding outside of teaching himself. Turk said, “My mom found someone who would teach me how to take my coding abilities to the next level.” Turk continued fine tuning his application skills.

“I learned a lot,” Turk said, “probably most of the stuff that I know about iOS development from him.” By high school, he became independent enough to work on apps by himself.

In the future Turk has plans to expand and build on his coding. “App development is something that I care about deeply,” Turk said, “and programming is a skill that I always associated with it because it is interesting to figure out how things work and the nuts and bolts of things.” Turk has examined the different phases of the development process.

“Developing the app is the easiest phase,” Turk said, “and testing, launching, and publicity are generally the most important if you have hopes of monetizing your talents and having a presence on the international stage.” Turk is trying to figure out what the next step is for his programming.

“Many of the corporate or bureaucratic aspects of app development require more than just one person,” Turk said, “and it takes large teams of people and years of trial and error for most of the apps you use daily to come into existence and prosperity.”

For the future, Turk is not exactly sure, but he has some ideas. “I have many other passions that I would like to pursue in college,” Turk said. “I am not exactly sure where that will take me.”