KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 — Apple’s yearly coding challenge for students, the Swift Student Challenge, will be back in February 2024.

What’s interesting is a new category has been announced, namely the Distinguished Winners who will get an invite to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California and spend three days there meeting up with developers as well as other winners.

There will be 50 winners selected on the basis of outstanding submissions. However all winners of the challenge, Distinguished Winner or not, will receive a free one-year membership of the Apple Developer programme that gives them the ability to submit apps to the App Store and receive official Apple support.

What is involved? Basically interested participants need to submit their apps playgrounds for the challenge during a three-week window in February 2024.

Students can get started learning Swift and planning their submissions on the free Apple Swift Playgrounds app that is available on devices with iPadOS 14.7 or later or macOS 11.5 or later.

Educators who wish to incorporate Swift into their learning institution activities can refer to free guides available on Apple Education Community including four new Everyone Can Code projects to assist learning endeavours.

Have a student coder you know who would be keen? Sign up at developer.apple.com for updates and a reminder when signups open.

Do note that previous challenges had a minimum age limit (differing by territory) where you would need to be 13 or older, though in the EU the minimum age is listed at 16, and it is likely to be the same next year.