Programming has always been a young person's game, but this should make even the most youthful of developers feel superannuated.

The nine-year-old son of Lim Thye Chean in Singapore is an official Apple Iphone developer.

Lim Ding Wen's Doodle Kids, a painting program, is available for download at the Apple Itunes store. His baby sisters, ages three and five, for whom he created the program, can draw with their fingers on the Iphone’s touch screen. A tap to clear the screen, and they can start a new picture. Other young children are using Doodle Kids too, if the 4,000 downloads in the past two weeks are any indication.

Dad has a website that says he is an Apple II programmer and CTO of an IT company. He uses his spare time to teach kids how to program. He must be a pretty good teacher – he and his son compete to see whose Iphone programs are downloaded the most.

This fourth grade boy has been on a computer since he was two, but didn’t start programming until he was seven. He programs in two languages, Actionscript and Javascript, but also understands four others – Applesoft Basic, Gsoft Basic, Complete Pascal, Orca/Pascal, and, his father notes, a little Objective-C.

The elder Lim explains that "The goal of Virtual GS is to bring back the fun and excitement of Apple IIGS programming for the young children." Apple IIGS came out in 1986, a 16-bit computer with graphics and music, the last of the Apple II series. Lim claims you can build your own using any MAC or PC. He outlines the steps on his website where he says "Apple IIGS is one of the best computers Apple ever produced, and through emulation it works perfectly in all modern machines. It is very simple to use and allows the young generation to do graphics and animation programming easily."

Young Ding Wen does seem to be having fun. However, he has competition in the naming of his product. Doodle Kids is the registered name for on-line stationery with a childish motif. People can customise stick figures that adorn thank you cards, announcements, or address labels, by selecting how each character looks: their face, clothing style, skin and hair color. It’s also a cute idea, aimed more at adults than children, however.

Ding Wen is writing a new Iphone application that will be a science fiction game he calls "Invader Wars". Let’s hope he has better luck with his choice of a title. This kid’s got talent. X