Samantha John (born ) is an American entrepreneur, known for being the co-founder of

Hopscotch Hopscotch is a popular playground game in which players toss a small object, called a lagger, into numbered triangles or a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop or jump through the spaces and retrieve the object. It is a ch ...

, a learn-to-code

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

Education and career

John studied

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, and comparative literature at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. John became interested in computers and programming in her senior year of college when she began working on a website for a student club. Before developing Hopscotch, she had worked as an engineer and a

developer Developer may refer to: Computers *Software developer, a person or organization who develop programs/applications *Video game developer, a person or business involved in video game development, the process of designing and creating games *Web deve ...

Pivotal Labs Pivotal Labs was an agile software development consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company developed Pivotal Tracker workflow software. It was a division of Pivotal Software. History The company was founded in 1989 ...

. She had been one of the only women developers at the company. After partnering with Hopscotch co-founder and fellow Columbia alumna Jocelyn Leavitt, John created her first app named "Daisy the Dinosaur" in 2012. John eventually left her consultancy job to pursue the development of Hopscotch full-time. In 2013,

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...

listed John as one of the "30 Most Important Women Under 30 in Tech", "Silicon Alley 100", and "28 Extraordinary Women in New York Tech" for cofounding Hopscotch Technologies.

Glamour magazine ''Glamour'' is today an online women's magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. For many years a traditional hard-copy magazine, it was founded in 1939 and first published in April 1939 in the United States. It was originally called '' ...

named John and co-founder Leavitt in their list of "35 Women Under 35 Who are Changing the Tech Industry" in 2014. In 2015, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.

Hopscotch

John created Hopscotch at the age of 26 with educator Jocelyn Leavitt, who noticed a lack of women and people of color in engineering. Hopscotch is the first programming language designed for a touch screen device. John and Leavitt aimed to create a programming language that was simple enough for children to use, while still allowing children to learn and be creative. The app involves a visual programming language, rather than employing lines of code. Hopscotch, which is aimed at children ages eight to 12, was downloaded 20,000 times in its first week. John and Leavitt first launched the app for

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

in 2013, and have since developed the app for iPhone. Within one year, users created over 2.5 million projects. Most children use the app to build games and create animated artwork while learning programming basics. According to the founders, nearly half of Hopscotch's users are girls. Hopscotch was partially inspired by HyperCard, an early software application and development kit which also inspired the creator of "wiki" software, as well as Scratch, an early visual programming environment. In addition, John notes inspiration from her mentor, Alan Kay. John revealed in Shark Tank, that Hopscotch had 200k active users every month for the first time in 2020. Hopscotch has received the Best Education Tech App Awards by Parent Magazine.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:John, Samantha Living people 1980s births American computer programmers American women in business Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni American women computer scientists American computer scientists American women engineers 21st-century American women scientists