Cody Brown has never taken a computer science class at school (or anywhere else, for that matter). And he’s still a year away from earning a diploma from Kuna High School.
But the 18-year-old, who taught himself the Objective-C programming language, has a successful home business called Trumpetfish Productions. In his free time, he develops iPhone applications.
The first app he created, “Messier,” was designed for astronomy enthusiasts like himself. It is a catalog of deep-sky objects and constellations identified by French astronomer Charles Messier.
Released in January 2010, the app sells for 99 cents at the iTunes App Store. He earns royalties each time someone buys the app; so far, about 200 have been sold. His royalties are 70 percent of sales; Apple gets 30 percent.
Brown was working on an iPad app for karate — another of his hobbies — when he was approached by a local veterinarian looking for someone to develop a new veterinary calculator for the iPhone.
Dr. John Chandler, a surgeon at WestVet Animal Emergency and Specialty Center in Garden City, says there were a couple of veterinary calculators available for the iPhone. But he wanted a more user-friendly and comprehensive one.
Chandler read a feature story about Brown in the Idaho Statesman and decided to hire him.
“I was impressed with how fast he got this done. This isn’t his job. He goes to school, so he had to work on it nights and weekends,” Chandler says.
Brown worked between November and February, when the app was released. DVM Calc sells for $4.99 on iTunes.
“I remember him having to do some editing of it while he was studying for finals,” Chandler says.
The vet and the developer are sharing royalties.
Chandler says 180 to 200 apps have been sold, approaching $1,000 in total sales.
“I’m not going to quit my day job to sell $5 iPhone apps,” Chandler joked. “I thought it would be helpful to the profession and might be kind of fun to have.”
The DVM Calc fills a narrow niche. Designed for veterinarians, vet techs and vet students, the app contains 26 practical calculators, 15 specific-constant rate-infusion calculators (that calculate the amount of medicines that should be infused in different patients) and 10 toxicity calculators.
The DVM Calc has drawn interest from others looking to have applications developed.
“I’ve had a whole lot of people come to me asking if they could get to Cody,” Chandler says. “People around town that I’ve shown this app to ... a lot of them seem to have their own ideas.”
Brown says he’s already working on a workout-exercise app for a new client.
The teen says he got interested in programming a few years ago. His father, Dave Brown, is a “tech junkie,” Cody Brown says.
“I loved video games as a kid, so I always wanted to figure out how to write one of those. I started to learn game language and graphics programming,” he says.
When he realized the iPhone App store was a newly developing market, and there was an opportunity to make some extra cash, he wanted in.
He thinks if he can get a half-dozen apps developed, the royalties will add up to real money when he’s a college student.
“It’s a good way to make side money when I can’t work and need to focus most of my time on school. People will always be buying iPhone apps,” says Brown, who also works part time at the Boise Scuba Center in Meridian.
He has been a master scuba diver since he was 12. He published a book called “Scuba for Kids” at 13.
In addition to his studies at Kuna High, Brown is a student at the Treasure Valley Math & Science Center. He plans to study biology at the College of Idaho, possibly minoring in computer science. He’s considering a career as a pathologist.
Dave Brown couldn’t be more proud of his son. He says he got his son the tools he needed, including a laptop, to get started. He sometimes pointed him in the right direction and helped him with contract negotiations. But “he’s truly done everything on his own,” Dave Brown says.
“I want my kid to be a solution thinker,” he says.
Dave Brown says the only concern he had about his son getting into app development is that he might get stumped by something, get frustrated and get burned out. Because he’s so busy with his business, Cody Brown isn’t required to do chores around the house.
“Homework is No. 1, before anything else,” Dave Brown says.
Cody says he saved up enough money to buy his own car last year — a 1996 Pontiac Grand Prix.
