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  • [Typing]

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: My name is Santiago Gonzalez. I'm 14 and I love to program.

  • [Music]

  • YAGO GONZALEZ Santiago is crazy about computers. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: I'm fluent in about a dozen

  • different programming languages. Thousands of people have downloaded my apps for the

  • Mac iPhone and iPad. YAGO GONZALEZ: From sixth grade, he jumped

  • to full time college student. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: I will be sixteen when

  • I graduate college and seventeen when I finish my masters. I really enjoy learning. To me,

  • I find it as essential as eating. Either you die or you're pretty miserable without learning.

  • [Music]

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: I generally wake up at 5:30. Then I program for about an hour, eat

  • breakfast. YAGO GONZALEZ: Here's some tortillas, Santi.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: [To father] Thank you. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: I go to school. Right now,

  • I'm a junior at the Colorado School of Mines. I'm majoring in computer science.

  • YONG BAKOS: Hey. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Hi, how are you?

  • YONG BAKOS: Good. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: I go to see Professor Bakos

  • pretty often to look at my code. YONG BAKOS: I usually have this disease which

  • I call long-line-itis. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Okay. Well we may be able

  • to do that. YONG BAKOS: [To Santiago] Ah, yeah. That removes

  • the instance which you don't even need. I didn't even think of that. Y'know the motivation

  • we talked about in class about writing beautiful code?

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Mhmm. YONG BAKOS: Is it enough to write that slew

  • of code such that the program just works or is the code also the artistic medium?

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Beautiful code is short and concise so if you were to give that code

  • to another programmer, they would say, oh, that's well written code. It's much like if

  • you're writing a poem.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Right now, here, this is Objective C. It's what iPhone, iPad & Mac

  • use for programming. I've created right now about 15 apps for both the Mac, iPhone, and

  • iPad. Sometimes when I go to sleep, I'm stuck with an annoying bug that I can't fix and

  • in my dreams I see myself programming. And when I wake up, I have figured out the solution.

  • YONG BAKOS: Santiago's not just a machine at excels at absorbing information and applying

  • that information. He actually is transforming that information and empowering himself to

  • create those things he wants to create.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: One of the main reasons I started developing apps was to help people

  • achieve something they wanted to do such as decorate a Christmas tree or play checkers

  • with a very nice user interface.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: Santiago he is very old in some ways and very young in others. Sometimes

  • you forget that you're talking to a 14-year-old, but sometimes he seems to be even younger

  • than that. He can care less about what he's wearing or girls.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: No, I'm not interested in having a girlfriend at all. I find that

  • it's a tremendous waste of time. PRODUCER: [Off camera] Tell me how you really

  • feel. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: No, that is how I really

  • feel! YAGO GONZALEZ: He's very sure of himself.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: He has been a different kid since he was little.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Well, I really like to crochet. This is one of the piggies from Angry

  • Birds. VANESSA GONZALEZ: He has come to accept that

  • difference and embrace it. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Yes, I definitely consider

  • myself a nerd. VANESSA GONZALEZ: But it has not always been

  • this good.

  • YAGO GONZALEZ: When we first tested Santiago, he scored in the 99.99%.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: We would explain something as if we were explaining it to an adult and

  • he would understand. YAGO GONZALEZ: His first interest was rocks

  • & minerals but he wanted to learn about rocks & minerals from adult books.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: At that point he was in first grade. You could tell that his mind

  • was somewhere else. YAGO GONZALEZ: He would come back from elementary

  • school and he would be miserable because he wasn't being challenged.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: I had teachers who didn't really quite get me. It was just a very boring

  • and kinda painful experience. YONG BAKOS: For exceptionally gifted students

  • like Santiago, these students are actually bored to tears literally the fact that they're

  • being given this material that doesn't challenge them. It's as if you and I sat down and we

  • said our ABCs for about 2 hours. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: In regular school, I found

  • it was sort of ridiculous to be a nerd. The other kids, they did tease me and kinda mock

  • me quite a bit. VANESSA GONZALEZ: We knew that he needed to

  • be somewhere else. God knows what would have happened if we didn't guide him the right

  • way. He could have been a disaster.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: And then we found Colorado School of Mines.

  • YONG BAKOS: Colorado School of Mines is actually a very reputable engineering school here in

  • the front range and actually throughout the world.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: They were willing to take a chance and Santiago proved that he could

  • do it. Now he can really be himself and relate with the students.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: [To student] This is really cool! Just seeing from not knowing at all,

  • it's magic. YONG BAKOS: We have all sorts of, let's call

  • them weird students, here at Mines so I think that most people on this campus really embrace

  • that. WILLIAM HOFF: I mean, we're all kind of nerds

  • here, so we can interact pretty easily. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: They're at Mines to learn,

  • they're not goofing off and interrupting all the time and I don't think I'd really want

  • to have to interact with kids my own age.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: [To professor] So these sensors are actually a little larger than

  • the other ones. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Currently, this semester,

  • I'm a research assistant for a professor at Mines.

  • WILLIAM HOFF: I'm working to improve energy efficiency. Santiago's developing the sensor

  • network we're going to be putting up in the building.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Yeah, I've been working on the algorithm to see what kind of filter

  • would be best for this without having any signal loss since we can't get any code on

  • the sun spots so it's difficult. RESEARCHER: We'll solve that. I don't know

  • what it is right now, but we'll figure it out.

  • WILLIAM HOFF: Do you want to sketch out what the code may look like?

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Sure. WILLIAM HOFF: I was really needing someone

  • to develop that kind of project and Santiago is a perfect fit.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: [To research team] We put the signal in a low pass filter

  • YONG BAKOS: He loves being in college and learning at the pace he needs to be learning

  • at. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Right now, there are quite

  • a few things in my different classes that are really really interesting. For example,

  • Elements of Computing Systems. TEACHER: Yes, Santiago.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: So is this what other architectures like x86 and ARM use?

  • TEACHER: The basic principle certainly will be the same.

  • VANESSA GONZALEZ: It's really exciting to see how much he enjoys learning about different

  • things and it's contagious as well. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: [To teacher] So there are

  • variations of MIPs? TEACHER: Yes, there are.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: Oh, I see. Thank you. Have a nice weekend.

  • YAGO GONZALEZ: If I had that drive when I was in college, that would have been fabulous.

  • I'm learning so much from my child now. That's pretty wonderful.

  • YONG BAKOS: Life for Santiago may be somewhat of a marathon that he's already running through

  • and I hope that he keeps the pace. SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: After I finish my masters,

  • I'm thinking about getting a PhD in computer science at Stanford and my ultimate goal is

  • to work at Apple. YAGO GONZALEZ: It's the golden age of computers.

  • He lives in the right time I think. He's a renaissance man.

  • SANTIAGO GONZALEZ: An artist paints a painting and when he finishes he says, oh wow that's

  • a very nice painting I like how it turned out. And it's the same thing with programming.

  • Going from just a bunch of lines of code to a finished product that people can enjoy all

  • over the world. It feels really nice.

  • One of my favorite apps I've developed is a slide puzzle. You can play individually

  • and sure that's fun, but then you can challenge your friends to see who completes the puzzle

  • the fastest and it even has built in voice chat so you can talk with someone who's playing

  • the puzzle with you even if they're on the other side of the world.

[Typing]

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