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High School Junior Creates iPhone App

Self-taught student codes 19,000 lines to build game.

Dylan Eirinberg lived a childhood similar to most who call Highland Park home. He played youth baseball and tennis growing up, and was not what one might consider a computer genius. 

Now, he's the proud, 16-year-old inventor of an iPhone App.

“I’ve always been an Apple fan,” said Eirinberg, a junior at Highland Park High School who was motivated to create Glide from playing games on his iPhone.

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When a software developer kit was released that allowed anyone to create an app, Eirinberg decided to give it a shot.

“It was really intriguing and that’s when I decided that I wanted to do it,” he recalled.

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Learning code on his own

Eirinberg went out and bought a few books that explained how to create iPhone Apps and write the Apple-specific code known as Objective-C. He tried and failed two times over the course of a few months before successfully creating Glide, which he worked on for hundreds of hours from last October until he finished it just weeks ago.  

Neither of Eirinberg’s parents know much about computer programming and he has not taken any classes on the topic. So the 19,000 lines of code he had to come up with for the software wasn't easy.  

"I’d get stuck with some issue and I wouldn’t know how to get it," Eirinberg said. "Online is really helpful but it reaches a point where they don’t have the exact issue you’re experiencing and I didn’t have anybody I could talk to."  

Eirinberg got frustrated at times, but never to the point of surrender. He would work on the program a few hours each day for a few weeks before the project reached a problem. He would consequently take a week off from the project altogether.   

Glide

Glide features a marble that moves left and right, up and down and the objective is to roll the marble into a hole. In order to play each level, you must beat the previous one and each level gets increasingly harder as various elements are added into the game.

Just eight days after its launch, Glide had been downloaded 185 times for 99 cents. Many of the downloads come from Highland Park residents and Eirinberg’s classmates, though people from foreign countries including Britain, Germany, Italy and India have downloaded the game as well.

Although the app can be played on an iPad, the game was originally created and formatted for the iPhone and iTouch. Therefore, it works best on those devices.  

More apps

After the experience of putting the game program together, Eirinberg thinks that he wants to study computer science when he goes to college next year. In the meantime, he wants to keep expanding what he has built.

“In the immediate future, I want to make more levels for this app and expand upon it,” said Eirinberg.  “I also want to make another game.”

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