(Unila): At Apple’s yearly Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2022, Balqis Safira Aini, a student of informatics engineering at the Universitas Lampung (Unila), won the Swift Student Challenge competition. Melodissimo was named after a virtual piano developed by Balqis.
“In this Swift Student Challenge event, participants were asked to make an innovative application for the Apple platform and it was contested,” said Balqis, Friday, May 27, 2022.
Before submitting her application, she claimed to have researched the contest via YouTube and testimonials from Apple Academy graduates who had won WWDC 2021. She came to the conclusion that Apple was searching for a tale in the Swift Student Challenge, “Telling a story through a code,” based on the information she had gathered.
Balqis’ childhood narrative served as the inspiration for the Melodissimo application. She claimed that all Indonesian students at the time had learned how to play the piano from elementary school, and the majority of them had their own pianos.
But at the time, neither of Balqis’s parents could afford to purchase a piano for her, so every time he had a piano lesson, she had to borrow from a friend.
“When I was in school, my parents did not consider it a priority to buy me a piano, so whenever I had piano lessons, I had to borrow one. Now that I’m older, I can afford to get my own instrument. Now, I wish to recall that experience,” remarked Balqis.
What is unique, Balqis explained, is that she observed Indonesian students adding note labels to their piano keys since piano beginners cannot memorize the notes without the note labels.
“This motivated me to build the Play and Learn function similar to playing a traditional piano, and the Quiz Feature, in which you are asked to identify, for instance, the Do tone on which key,” the Unila student who interned at the Apple Developer Academy in 2022 revealed.
Balqis said that her restricted time was the greatest barrier to her participation in this competition. During her internship at the Apple Developer Academy, she worked on projects in addition to developing an application for the competition, she explained.
“Additionally, the two projects utilize vastly different frameworks; one utilizes UIKit, while the other uses SwiftUI. My mind must be divided in order to simultaneously learn the two frameworks and meet upcoming deadlines,” she stated.
In spite of this, she completed the Melodissimo application within ten days. Apple’s competition entry deadline was on April 24, Cupertino Time, California, United States, and winners were announced on May 24, Cupertino Time.
Balqis confessed that she was astonished and shaken when Apple notified her that she had won the Swift Student Challenge since she did not anticipate to win a worldwide competition in which thousands of students and developers from around the world participated.
Initially, she merely wished to challenge herself by taking part in the WWDC competition, with no intention of winning.
She added that she just tried to challenge herself she never believed she would win since the competition was worldwide in scope, but that was okay for her, thinking that the most important thing was that she joined, hoping to achieve something. Finally, she won and she was so astonished that she was trembling as she certainly did not expect it.
Winners of this special Apple award are to receive an exclusive WWDC 2022 outfit, a WWDC 2022 pin set, and the privilege of being an Apple Developer Program member for one year. In addition, the Swift Student Challenge winners were awarded AirPods Pro.
Balqis, who has had a passion for coding since junior high, intends to investigate and expand the Apple ecosystem. She continued, i want to be an IOS Developer and be able to develop Apple’s ecosystem. [PR Team]
