When Brandon Boynton arrived at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco on an Apple scholarship and learned the tech giant was launching a new programming language called Swift, his initial reaction was one that perhaps left Apple a little bruised.
"Please say you're kidding," the 16-year-old licensed Apple developer told "Squawk Alley." "I finally got to the point where I feel very comfortable with Objective C, and then I come here."
Boynton, who already has several apps in the App Store, including The BullyBox, a way for middle school and high school students to report acts of bullying in a safe and anonymous way, only learned about the scholarship a week before the deadline.
Without the help of the $1,600 scholarship, he says he could not have attended the conference. It's a good thing he did, then. Apple says it received hundreds of submissions for its WWDC scholarships, of which 200 were selected from 30 countries this year. Among the application requirements? Each young coder had to create an app that told a judging committee about themselves as part of the application process.
"I'm really excited for [Swift] to take hold," he said. "But it is a whole new language for us to learn and I'm kind of starting back at square one."
—By CNBC's David Montalvo