CAM Academy senior Mackinnon Buck works with Microsoft Visual Studio at his home. Buck recently created a mobile app for his school website allowing greater accessibility for smartphone users.
CAM Academy senior Mackinnon Buck shows off the mobile app he made for his school website. Buck will continue programming after graduating in June as he will attend California Polytechnic State University, majoring in computer science
In a technological landscape inundated with apps, one local high school senior has made his own step into the industry, creating a mobile solution for his school website.
Mackinnon Buck, a senior at CAM Academy, recently released an application as one of his many projects involving programming he has completed in six years experience with the skill.
The app he made, simply called “CAM Academy,” makes the school’s website more fit to be used on mobile devices. The idea came about due to the school’s website not being optimized for mobile use, Buck said. What his app does is turn the content from the website into a mobile-friendly format, making it more readily useable on a smartphone than normal.
The app works similar to mobile-friendly versions that some websites have, though it being an app and not a separate version is a distinction.
Apart from his own experience using the website and its limitations, Buck said the impetus for creating it also came from a member of the Academy’s marketing committee. That individual had good reason to do so, given that Buck is quite familiar in the realm of software development and computer programming.
Buck has been programming since he was 12, originally starting off with a computer game. Curious as to how games were made, he took it upon himself to do some investigation and started learning on his own.
Now he touts experience in a number of programming languages, including C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, Lua and Rust. Some of his work has included a tool that can bypass file size limits on email, to an animated video for his FIRST Robotics team, one of thousands of teams that take on competitions to build the best robot.
Although he has much experience relative to his age, Buck said this was the first time he had made a mobile app. Mostly his focus had been on computer programming and since joining FIRST Robotics, working with robots.
He needed to do some preliminary research given his unfamiliarity with app-making, though after finding the best tools for the process it was a matter of seeing how the CAM Academy website worked behind the scenes to coordinate the display as well as website updates for the app.
“Once that was all figured out it was pretty much straightforward,” Buck said.
Buck’s development of the app started in December of 2016. It launched this spring. The app has a modest 20 downloads and maintains a five-star rating on the app store.
Though the app has made the Battle Ground Public Schools communications blog, Buck’s future in programming is just beginning. Since 2015 he has held an internship with Autodesk, a software company that makes products for everything from engineering to entertainment.
“It’s really awesome; it’s a really fantastic opportunity,” Buck said.
As someone who took initiative on his own to teach himself how to program, Buck’s biggest advice for youth who might want to go down a similar path is not giving up.
“The learning curve for programming is pretty steep at first, like for me it was like ‘I have no idea what’s going on, I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m just kind of copying what this book says,’” Buck said. “I would say to power through that, because once you get past that curve it’s smooth sailing from there and you can do whatever you want.”
