Apple's 'App development with Swift' course is now part of 30 community colleges in the US

Tech giant Apple on Saturday announced that its “App Development with Swift” curriculum will be offered in over 30 community colleges across the United States in 2017-2018 school year. [caption id=“attachment_3856249” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational Image. Reuters[/caption] The course will enable the students with no programming experience to build their own fully-functional apps. It has been created by engineers and educators at Apple and spans one year. **Swift** is an open source programming language developed by **Apple** . “We believe passionately that the opportunity should be extended to everyone and community colleges have a powerful reach into communities where education becomes the great equaliser,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement. The company is aiming to prepare the students to build careers in software development and Information Technology. Several community colleges like Austin Community College District, Northeast Mississippi Community College, Northwest Kansas Technical College and campuses in the Alabama Community College System have added the curriculum for the session. “Apple is going to be a force multiplier in the community’s ongoing efforts to lift 10,000 people out of poverty and into good jobs over the next five years,” said Austin Mayor Steve Adler. “Through our ‘Strong Start, Strong Finish’ initiative, I have made it a priority to seek out computer science opportunities for all Alabama students,” said Alabama Governor Kay Ivey. “I fully support this partnership with Apple because of the advanced learning opportunities and real-world experiences it provides.” Apple’s app economy supports 1.5 million jobs in the US. In 2016, software developers in the US earned $5 billion through the App Store, a 40 per cent increase over 2015. Since the App Store launched, Apple has paid out $16 billion to US developers, over one-quarter of total App Store earnings. With inputs from IANS