

Why the Granny Coder decided to make her first iPhone game aged 77 - dejv
http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Gelex/feature.asp?c=15588

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cesare
Very original marketing gimmick.

Edit: as if it wasn't obvious enough, check the hands in this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZATuhCoJLc>

Of course a story like this brings a lot of traffic to pocketgamer. It's not
worth to check if it's true.

~~~
daleharvey
"I have a huge support from my three grandsons. Michal bough me an iPhone as I
mentioned, then they gave me a Mac, because I had a Windows PC. One of them is
studying IT at university, so he is my adviser sometimes. And all three of
them are watching everything I create and give me feedback. They've also made
the videos on my blog."

not that that means its not true, but still.

~~~
cesare
She knows how to code a game. She has learnt objective-c, Xcode, the iPhone
sdk api and the chipmunk physics library. She also does her own graphics (a
blog entry is titled 'How to polish your game', in two parts) with a style
that is clearly made by a twentysomething and that would require a very sharp
eye.

But she couldn't operate a video camera?

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alex_c
The inevitability of growing old scares me like few other things. My biggest
consolation is that I should be able to keep creating no matter how old I get
- and unlike other passions, this passion of ours only requires a sound mind,
not necessarily a sound body.

I want to be like Marie when I grow up.

~~~
rubentopo
It's such a relief for those of us who share that fear. I stumbled upon this
letter yesterday, it's a complaint that a 98 year old lady wrote to her bank's
CEO. (<http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art42630.asp>)

These two ladies are an excellent example that age is not an impediment for
doing things (or doing something about things...in the latter case).

~~~
cubicle67
Hmmm... the Internet seems to have helped develop in me a very strong level of
cynicism such that I'd put the chances of this being genuine at < 5%, and the
Granny Coder at about 40%

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Raphomet
Oh, man. From the title I thought _why came back in a brand new geriatric form
- Why the Granny Coder. It's going to be a long day.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
<http://www.whythegrannycoder.com> is available if you're interested :-)

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petercooper
What a lady! This makes me feel ashamed for throwing in the towel with iPhone
development simply because the method names were too verbose and hard to
remember and the whole deployment profile/signing stuff.. :)

~~~
jrockway
The things that annoy professional programmers are very different from the
things that annoy "amateur" programmers. (I use quotes because I don't want to
imply that this lady is not a good programmer or whatever. Her goals are to
create a single fun game in her free time, so the things that annoy her are
going to be different than what annoys someone who has to write a new
"business app" every month.)

~~~
petercooper
That's a great point - I hadn't thought of that. 10 years ago I just put up
with and accepted a lot of weird stuff related to programming because I was
pretty much a novice and just got on with it. Now I've reached a point where I
can question things.. just a bit too much though, it seems!

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wallflower
Inspiring. Another cogent example of how the reasons we give for not
wholeheartedly pursuing a project challenge are really just excuses. I look
forward to buying and playing her iPhone puzzle game.

<http://grannycoder.blogspot.com/>

~~~
callahad
I must say, I love how she starts her posts with "Hello, kids." I was as first
offended, at least until I reconsidered what we look like from her
perspective.

