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Forget Archery, At Camp in Silicon Valley We Build Apps

This article is more than 10 years old.

It is a bright, balmy morning in the upscale Silicon Valley suburb of Atherton, California. Venture capitalist Gary Dillabough’s backyard is an idyllic, perfectly-manicured spread of leisure temptations. There’s a pool, a tennis court with basketball hoops, a putting green, trampoline and badminton lawn. But never mind all that. Along with 12 kids ranging in ages from eight to 13, I'm in the cavernous pool cabana watching a Power Point presentation.

“How do you chose the correct programming language?” flashes a slide.

It is the middle of summer in paradise and we are learning how to code and market iPhone apps. Our teachers aren’t computer science P.h.D’s or even 20-something Google developers putting in some feel-good time, but rather Matt Dillabough and Max Colbert, two 13-year-olds who think Facebook is a fad and software development is a must-have skill.

Apple is getting mysterious about their approval process. We believe they may be outsourcing it,” says Dillabough. He adds: “This is why presentation can make all the difference in your app.”

We are lined up two per desk with Mac laptops humming.  The goal by the end of the week is to have a quiz app submitted to Apple. The online game Minecraft is the most popular quiz theme for the bunch, followed by tennis and golf. That these kids in braces are creating apps risks making it sound wonderfully simple and a fulfillment of the everyone-as-coder vision technologists have dreamed of for years. But this is tricky stuff.

Every quiz question is developed in three parts, with each referring to the other. There’s some neat drag and drop functions, but also classically complex and unforgiving code lines. It’s easy to mistype a colon for a semi-colon and get vexing error messages. I make this gaffe three times in five minutes.

“These files are going to be best friends, but first you have to get them to talk to each other,” Colbert tells the group. After being asked to type in a five-sentence-long code sequence, the students get restless and start cracking jokes. Colbert takes note, waves his arms as if to make up for his tiny frame and says: “Hey guys, chill out. This stuff is important to understand. Trust me."

Dillabough and Colbert are the founders and head teachers of the Menlo App Academy. Their younger brothers, John Dillabough and William Colbert, serve as tech support and activity coordinators. They manage snack purchases and lunch clean-up. The elder brother duo launched the Academy last fall as a weekend class after being unimpressed with their school's computer class, which they describe as “typing”. They learned how to code apps with their Dads in their spare time. Gary Dillabough is a green tech investor at Westley Group; Brett Colbert is a vice president at NetApp.

Both parents quickly took the idea of pushing their kids toward a real understanding of technology. “Our schools have great computers, but they teach kids how to paint and draw lines, nothing that would be of value professionally later. Meanwhile the technical guy I send to conferences gets 20 job offers,” says Colbert. And yet a deeper, more universal parental anxiety is driving this: “Gary and I had crappy jobs as kids and had to really climb our way up. Our kids live in this safe cocoon. They play games and hang out with friends. How do we balance that with some set of skills and knowledge that will allow them to compete?”

The Academy was quickly popular. Kids from Texas and Tokyo inquired about attending remotely somehow. The summer session sold out in weeks. They charge of $350 per student. The CEO of the recently-public security technology company Fortinet sent his son to the Academy, as did Chris Espinosa, Apple’s eighth employee (he was 14 when he joined). In a twist that could only happen in Silicon Valley, Espinosa pioneered Apple’s  Xcode integrated design environment. This happens to be the software-creating tool set these kids are using to build their apps.

Max’s Dad is sitting in the corner of the room with his own laptop, a mug of coffee, and the family’s new rescue puppy. He chimes in only if someone’s computer crashes or the boys need help getting everyone’s attention. There are rules at the Menlo App Academy. Arrive ten minutes early. Make sure someone picks you up on time. But perhaps the most important one of all: no phones.

In a moment of weakness during lunch break, Max Colbert gives in on this one. Within seconds six boys are suddenly silent as their noses press up against their iPhone screens playing games. “Someone needs to turn off their sound,” bellows one. Dillabough pulls Colbert aside. He’s irritated: “Why did you let them use their phones? We can’t have distractions like this. They need to do something outside during their breaks. Kids need to blow off steam.” No more phone access from then on.

The boys are expected to cover their costs, manage their Web site and enrollment. They’re interested in scaling their App Academy into a kind of digital Boy Scouts of America, and so they’ve been researching online learning. They’re also learning how to use a new mobile development tool from Corona Labs, which would allow them to develop for Google’s Android operating system. Dillabough feels it is a priority to be "cross platform" in a rapidly-evolving technology space.