essays

Author: ApolloZhu

App.md

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+# Apps on the App Store
+
+> If you have one or more apps on the App Store created entirely by you as an individual, tell us about them. This will not influence the selection process.
+
+Learn to Drive A-Z is my app on the App Store, which helps people prepare to take the Driver’s Knowledge Exam for getting a Virginian Driver’s License. It was originally hosted under my mom’s name, but now I transferred it to my account as I’m over 18.
+
+I first started to work on this app during the winter break of 2016, when I started to prepare for the exam. I find it inconvenient to carry around the driver’s manual, and there’s no easy way to view all the practice quiz problems. Since I started to learn the Swift Programming Language in 2015 on my own, I haven’t been able to put my newfound skills into practice, so I saw this as a perfect chance to make my first app. And by the time our school started, I have completed the first working version, anxiously reviewing in the DMV’s waiting area with my app, and passed the test with flying colors. Hooray!
+
+Excited, I shared my app with my classmates who are also preparing for the exam; they too used my app to study for their exams. When my family friends moved to Virginia, they also tried it out to help with their preparations. Due to the app transfer, I could no longer see how many people have benefited from my weekend project, but once there were at least 5000 users, and I’m proud of myself for making this achievement.
+
+Now many years have passed, I continue to make incremental changes to the app, utilizing the newly released technologies and improve existing experiences. Recently I did a more comprehensive accessibility check to make sure everyone can have equal access to the information presented in the app, improved the dark mode support, and more. I’m currently working on adding home screen widgets to show “question of the day,” and hopefully it will be out by WWDC21, so I could add even more new features.

Beyond WWDC.md

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+# Beyond WWDC21
+
+> If you've shared or considered sharing your coding knowledge and enthusiasm for computer science with others, let us know.
+
+Last quarter, I became a teaching assistant at the University of Washington for Computer Science and Engineering. However, this is not the first time when I shared my knowledge and passion with others. Since high school, I’ve been tutoring other students in APCSA through the school’s tutoring center, in addition to offering coding workshops through the CS club. Continuing this tradition, I started the Mobile Development Club at UW Seattle with some friends I met at the university’s Hackathon, aiming to fill the mobile dev curriculum gap and empowering students to explore new and exciting frontier outside of the classroom. Right after we hosted our Hackathon and the first few meetings, everything went into lockdown, but we quickly adapted to the new online format. We turned to record SwiftUI tutorials and publish them on YouTube; set up a website where we share useful links, tips, and tricks; and offer synchronous zoom meetings to build the community. I’m really glad to see we have new members joining, and find our club meetings to be fun and meaningful.
+
+In the times we get together, we like to discuss bugs and challenges we are facing, and interesting projects we could work on together. One of them is TrialX, a SwiftUI project that we collaborating with Standard graduates from Pacific Udall Center; utilizing ResearchKit, CareKit, SwiftUI, and more to implement Parkinson’s disease trial and research app. As we are working on it, I found there’s an issue with localization if we integrate CareKit through Swift Package Manager. But since it’s open-source, I was able to discover the cause and sent a pull request to fix it. Just like so, I spend my free time making contributions to the open-source community. I like to share the code that I wrote, so others can learn from my mistakes and success. I fixed some issues with the Swift Programming Language as I discover them, but my main focus is maintaining EFQRCode, a library for generating stylized QRCode across all Apple platforms. I wrote code to generate QRCodes natively on Apple Watches, integrated it into this open-source project, and continue to update the API to be more Swifty. As I fix the bugs, I always discover new and intriguing things about features that I’m unaware of in the related system frameworks, and I always write about the discoveries in my blog, especially those without official documentation.
+
+As I become a teaching assistant, now my main focus is to share my expertise and support students working through classes, inspiring them to pursue computer science despite the challenges they face. I’m honored, but also frightened, worrying that I would destroy someone’s future if I don’t act to the best of myself. But as we approached the end of the quarter, a student of mine came and said they really liked my lectures and even nominated me for the best TA, I know my handwork has paid off. Cheered, I continue on.