I began learning to code with Swift Playgrounds in my fifth year of primary school. In March 2026, volunteering at Let’s Vision in Shanghai gave me my first opportunity to take part in a real developer community event. Programming, which had started as something I explored on my own, now connected me to people building apps and sharing what they had learned.
01 / TAKING PART
A place in
the community.
Let’s Vision is a developer community event. Alongside leading app developers, there were many university students who were still studying and already building. Being there as a volunteer made the community feel approachable: there was room for someone like me to contribute, ask questions and learn.
ON THE OFFICIAL TEAM PAGE
Minnie Wang
“A Swift-loving high school girl”
That is how the conference website introduces me. Seeing my name among the team made this feel like a community I could contribute to, even while I am still at the beginning of my engineering journey.
See the conference team ↗
02 / AROUND THE CONFERENCE
Software meets
the world around it.
Some of the university students were already using coding agents to build apps and start their own ventures. That was especially inspiring. They were turning ideas into something real while still learning, and it made me think: I could take that step too.
For my own work, this raises a useful question: what does a technology allow someone to experience? An interface is part of the engineering. The way a person understands and uses it matters as much as what the system can do.
03 / ENGINEERING WITH AGENTS
More capability.
More reason to understand.
My strongest impression was that the conversation is moving beyond asking an LLM for an answer. Agents are changing how people approach the work of building software. To me, this feels like the beginning of a new era.
MY TAKEAWAY
Engineering thinking and experience can help us use agents to become more capable. I want to learn how to work with these tools while developing the judgement to guide them.
The event summary captures discussions about faster development, the difficulty of finding hidden bugs, and the importance of understanding a product’s purpose. They made me think about the judgement a developer still needs to bring to the work.
Understand the need
Decide who the work is for and what a useful result would look like.
Bring context
Use knowledge of the system and its constraints to direct the work.
Evaluate the result
Test behaviour, question assumptions and take responsibility for the outcome.
These are habits I want to strengthen. An agent may help me move faster, but understanding what I am building gives that speed a direction.
Three ideas from the event summary
- Development speed & quality
- Participants discussed how faster AI-assisted coding can create new challenges in testing, stability and working with existing systems.
- Apps shaped around an intention
- The notes explore the possibility of more personalised, on-demand software and functions that a system can call when needed. This is a direction I would like to investigate.
- Community still matters
- The summary emphasises human connection, design judgement and collaboration across disciplines as the tools of creation change.
04 / THE COURAGE TO BEGIN
Be Brave.
I came away from the event thinking: I can do this too. Seeing students use coding agents to build their own apps made the next step feel within reach. I do not need to have every answer before I begin; I need the courage to try, learn and keep going.
“Be Brave” is my school’s motto. After Let’s Vision, those words felt newly practical: be brave enough to build an idea, put it into the world and learn from what happens. I want to carry that courage alongside “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”—staying curious, asking questions and deepening my engineering skills as the tools change.
A CONNECTION TO MY PROJECTS
My music accessibility app and vibration belt give that learning a purpose: helping more people enjoy music. I want to explore how agents might help me develop these ideas, while listening carefully to the people they are intended for.
Explore my engineering projects →Personal participation and reflections are based on my volunteer account. Conference dates, venue and team listing: Let’s Vision official website. Event photographs and discussion summaries: the supplied conference recap presentation. The profile card is a supplied screenshot of the official website.