Around two years ago, Michael Deriso enrolled in a programming course, Little Ivy Academy, since his parents wanted him to try something new over the summer. Through hours of work and playing around on a computer at the academy and at home, an idea dawned on him.

“[I wanted to] create a party hosting app after playing around with video games and seeing how different functions work,” freshman Deriso said. “I learned to program when I played around with the prototypes, looked up YouTube tutorials constantly, and went on forums online to find answers.” 

Deriso began creating his own app, “Hostend,” on Mar. 19 of 2019, which allows users to easily plan parties. The app is free, but in order to add special features, such as gift registry or photo sharing, a user would have to pay.

Deriso said in the beginning of the process, the app was “kind of a mess” because he did not know much about coding, so he decided to take a break. Once he developed stronger programming skills through practicing every night, he decided to continue.

“Eventually, I was able to complete the first step of allowing the person to invite other people to parties through email addresses,” Deriso said. 

Once the app was designed, Deriso sent a text to his friends asking for their feedback.

 “You can see the amount of work he put into it because of how helpful the app is to people,” freshman Nupur Karnik said. 

Deriso is planning on adding “Hostend” to the App Store, but he first has to write an app description and film a video to Apple explaining how the app functions. 

“I have to fix some of the problems that might come with it, like the bugs that might show up from making mistakes in the code,” Deriso said. “Another problem is that I have to make sure I am prepared for how many people will be coming into the app.” 

During Deriso’s time at Little Ivy, freshman Ben Topolosky was taking classes as well, and both built programs together throughout the summer. 

“At Little Ivy, you learn a program named Scratch, and it takes time to learn it,” Topolosky said, “Once you reach that point, you jump into other programs as you gain confidence.”

Deriso decided to ask Topolosky to build the android version for his app, which will be finished in half a year.

“I tend to overwork myself and typically when there’s a problem,” Deriso said. “It is hard for me to say, ‘Okay, I need to take a break,’ and that it was a struggle for me. I learned that patience was key because without it, I wouldn’t be able to fix the problems that I had.”