Aadi Shah Builds Compass, an Offline Map App, on the Way to an Apple Swift Certification at Parul University!

Aadi Shah is a computer science and engineering student at Parul University. His interest in Swift goes back to his second year, when he kept looking at the labs during his own lab sessions and wondering when he would get the chance to study there. The thought did not go away. It grew into curiosity, and curiosity pushed him to ask. The enquiry led him to the Swift Coding Club and the Tinkering Hub, and a passing thought became a plan.

The main barrier to learning Swift is the need for a Mac, since Xcode runs only on Apple computers, and Aadi did not have one. He wondered how he would learn the language at all. The answer came quickly: he could use the college’s Mac systems freely, at any time, and work on them. That removed the barrier. A student without a personal Mac can still learn Swift at Parul University, and his own preparation is proof of it.

His favourite part of the experience was the evening classes. From 9 to 5, he had academics, and from 5 to 7, Monday to Saturday, he sat in the lab and learned the more advanced concepts, with many seniors around him.

The evenings mixed new material with repeated basics. He kept returning to the fundamentals while adding advanced concepts on top, and he credits that mix for his confidence in the exam.

During the certification, he built a real project, a map-based app he named Compass. It carries the whole offline city map of Cupertino, California, taken from an offline-size map and brought into the app to give users a different way of navigating. The app fits the kind of work he wants to do in Swift: apps that run without depending on a network. The same thinking appears in the Swift Coding Challenge rules, which ask for an app under 65 MB that works offline on a creative idea.

Aadi scored 925 out of 1000. The skill he values most is the ability to take an idea all the way to a working app in Swift, from zero to production scale, rather than knowing a few commands. He is proud to hold a skill that few of his peers have, and together with his knowledge of Python, Java, and Kotlin, it widens his range as a developer.

Aadi sees Swift as a new language with a growing platform behind it. Android has a large marketplace, while the iPhone side is still growing, and he wants to build for it early and scale as it expands. His next step is an advanced, trainer-level certification offered by the university’s faculty, which would take him from learning the language to teaching it. His closing message is the one his trainer gave him: do not be nervous, keep challenging yourself, and grow beyond your limits. If you’re passionate about coding and AI, pursue B.Tech CSE in AI/ML and get to work for top tech companies, nationally & internationally!

Students who want to build real Swift apps can start at the campus Apple Lab and the Future Skills Centre.

Apple Innovation Lab: paruluniversity.ac.in/apple-innovation-lab

Lakshya 2047, Centre for Future Skills: paruluniversity.ac.in/academics/lakshya-2047

• Aadi Shah, CSE student, Apple Swift Associate certified
• Prof. Umang Panchal, Apple Certified Trainer and faculty mentor
• Parul University, Vadodara, Gujarat