In early June 2022, during his study exchange at California State University Long Beach, our 4th year student, Valentin Mille (from Epitech Bordeaux) had the opportunity to participate at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC22) in California.
Right from the classrooms of Epitech to one of the main developers events of the Apple community in the United States: this is the exciting adventure experienced by Valentin, an enthusiast developer who had the privilege of immersing himself in the world of Apple for a few days. On his return to France, he agreed to share this unforgettable experience with us.
“Having sparkles in my eyes”
After starting his studies at Epitech, Valentin quickly began to learn Swift, Apple’s programming language, in order to get to grips with Apple’s technologies. He got a taste for developing mobile applications on iOS. “That’s how it all started: I took some training courses and went freelance as an iOS developer, and did my first projects from there”.
As a next step, Valentin participated this year in the Student Swift Challenge, an annual event where Apple invites students to develop a mobile application. And although he unfortunately did not win this prestigious competition, he felt very lucky to have been a part of it.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t win, but Apple sent me an invitation to attend WWDC ” he says. “I had it written down on my calendar as : ‘WWDC deadline announcement’ and when I got the email and opened it, I had sparkles in my eyes, right away”
Living an unique experience among Apple’s teams
“Of course, it was a bit of a surprise to hear the announcement: I couldn’t believe it, and kept saying to myself: ‘you’re going to Apple’”. I was still living in California at the time. I had planned to return in France at the end of May but I have immediately decided to reschedule my departure flight.”
If this invitation has made him change his plans for his return to France, he does not regret to have turned his agenda upside down. Thanks to this event he had the opportunity to experience some unforgettable moments with the Apple teams.
“Based on the technology, there were specialised teams who answered to all our questions “
“What has impressed me the most during this event was seeing how supportive Apple’s community is; starting with all its engineers and the entire team. I think that’s something Apple wants to highlight: in their company everyone is friendly and there’s always mutual support.”
Valentin – Epitech Bordeaux
“This experience allowed me to meet a lot of iOS developers, with whom I still keep in touch. It also allowed me to realize how much I love technology and its community. I am sure now that this is what I want to do: to work with Apple technologies and continue on this path.”
Learning by doing
“What Epitech has teach me is to be able to learn by myself. In my first and second year of studies I was already starting to learn by myself about iOS development. And in that regard, I think Epitech really helped me to realise that we are not limited, we are just setting our own barriers sometimes.”