While most high school seniors are overwhelmed with college applications, SAT/ACT tests, scholarship applications, not to mention keeping up with their rigorous course load, David Hodge, a senior at Spring Valley, recently released an iPhone app that he developed called Meteor Pong. The iPhone game takes the traditional pong game from the 1970s and adds a twist. "It's pong -- with four paddles, meteors and neon." Try to keep the meteor in play as long as possible as it accelerates out of control.
Being part of the Discovery Program at Spring Valley gave David the courage to start designing, coding, and putting his imagination into a tangible form. To learn programming, he watched online video lectures from Stanford University about iPhone application development. As with creating anything from the ground up, David hit a few snags along the way. Perseverance and determination enabled him to succeed. David is currently working on adding new features and gradually improving the game, which will become apparent in future updates.
"Though learning programming and creating Meteor Pong was very difficult, I am a firm advocate of the idea that if you can dream it, you can achieve it," David said. "As Henry Ford said, 'whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right.' It's simply a matter of going out and getting it."
In the Fall David will be pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science at the University of South Carolina.
Check out David's website Genesis Apps or download Meteor Pong at the App Store.