This year’s Apple Swift Student Challenge selected 350 of the brightest young programmers from 37 countries. Among them were two students from Poland, who proved that the best software is created out of a need to solve specific, real-life problems. Their projects show how the application development process is evolving, with artificial intelligence steadily lowering the entry threshold for non-IT developers.
Adam Markocki, studying international relations at the Cracow University of Economics, created the SafePoland app. He was inspired by the geopolitical situation and the paper crisis advisories issued by the Polish government. Markocki spotted a market gap, rightly assuming that a paper leaflet would not reproduce the sound of an emergency siren. His app is a stress-optimised pocket guide for emergencies. It offers large buttons, high contrast and support for five languages. Markocki successfully used an artificial intelligence model to automate translations and generate graphics. This allowed him, as someone with no IT background, to focus solely on user experience architecture.
A completely different niche was developed by Michal Lisicki from the Jagiellonian University. As a long-time musician and chorister, he set out to digitise distributed communication in vocal ensembles. His Camerappka application replaces cumbersome spreadsheets by offering an integrated calendar, an offline sheet music database and a real-time voice classification tool. The programme accurately analyses pitch and prompts new singers about their vocal section. Lisicki was also supported by artificial intelligence, but in a more conservative way. He treated the coding assistants solely as virtual partners for optimisation discussions, retaining full control over the software architecture.
Both winning projects share a key conclusion. Young developers are no longer creating technology for technology’s sake. They are using Apple’s advanced environments and generative tools to rapidly turn their domain knowledge into fully functional, marketable products. Soon, both developers will have the opportunity to validate their ideas in the heart of Silicon Valley, at WWDC 2026.
