Bronxville News

AJ Radik, a rising senior at Bronxville High School, has been selected as a winner of Apple’s WWDC20 Swift Student Challenge. The global coding competition, which drew entries from thousands of the brightest students from around the world, recognized Radik for his innovation, creativity and technical ability. 

As part of the competition, students were challenged to submit an original, interactive Swift Playgrounds project that could be experienced within three minutes. As a result, Radik was selected as one of 350 winners, spanning 41 countries. 

Apple’s Swift Playgrounds is a platform that teaches the basics of the Swift programming language. For his project, Radik created the PathFinder Visualizer app, which visualizes how different types of pathfinding algorithms operate to build custom-drawn graphs. Intended for computer science students, Radik said he drew inspiration from a previous project he worked on in an Advanced Placement computer science class. 

“My goal was to create a visually appealing, stable, simple, customizable and distributable application that could help computer science students understand pathfinding algorithms,” Radik said. “It always makes my day when I receive messages from students who have used PathFinder Visualizer to study for their exams or from nontechnical folks who have just enjoyed playing around with the app.” 

According to Apple, the competition was designed to provide students with a way to showcase their love of coding, as well as support and nurture the next generation of developers. Winners of the WWDC20 Swift Student Challenge attended a virtual conference on June 22 to connect with other developers. 

For more information on Radik’s project, visit https://pathfinder.ajradik.io/. It is also available on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pathfinder-visualizer/id1507723797?mt=8