The members of this code club may only be in years 7 to 9 but they have already helped create a customised weather app that tells users the exact temperature wherever they are.
Three computer scientists, including Alex Benevento, the co-developer of one of the first apps to be featured in the Apple Watch, formed the club at Melbourne's Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School to teach students how to write code so they can build their own apps.
"The weather app uses location services to find the location and then the weather in that area," says year 9 student Stephen Christopoulos.
"Coding is definitely very important – I think it should be a more active part of school in general."
Year 8 student Mitchell Gust said he had previously taught himself Xcode (the software used by Apple to build apps) by watching YouTube videos and joining chat forums.
"I got the basics but to go ahead without support was really hard," Mitchell said.
"It was really good to work for Alex because he created a really big app [The Whole Pantry] in the Apple App store, which went viral. He's an IT rock star."
Digital marketer Will Egan said he was amazed by the speed students picked up programming language.
"Their brains are like sponges … some of these kids think the way computers are written. Teachers call it algorithmic thinking – they think in a really intuitive way."
He said the developers were often emailed by the students after code club asking for assistance with problems.
"They are really into it. We have to keep telling them their exams come first."
Mr Egan said he, Mr Benevento and Daniel Nitsikopoulos formed code club because programming was an important skill that was rarely taught at school because few teachers know how to code.
"A lot of people in our community talk about programming being a new form of literacy. Leaving programming to university is the equivalent of leaving maths to university."
Mr Egan's next challenge is to roll out code club nationally.
At the recent Startup Weekend Education Melbourne he joined forces with Aitken Creek Primary teacher Bec Spink, who has pioneered the use of technology in the classroom.
Their team has created a website www.codefuture.org that matches education projects with developers.
For example, there might be a project in Sydney that wants a developer to help run a hackathon during Science week. Or a teacher in the Adelaide Hills who has 10 kids who want to learn Java. Or someone in Coburg who wants to start a weekly code club.
"We've already had developers and educators sign up," Ms Spink says.
"We've found developers are willing to give up three to four hours a week because they believe children should learn to code because they didn't have these opportunities when they were young."
Ms Spink said she was inspired by her "cluey" year 5/6 class at Aitken Creek Primary who approached her with an idea to create an app to teach cyber safety.
"They came to me and said: 'Here's an app, how do I build it?' I had no idea," Ms Spink said.
Ms Spink found an online template but said it didn't allow the kids to use their creativity.
"Because I didn't have the skills to teach them computer science to write an app it lost some of the elements that would have made their app much more exciting," she says.
Mr Egan would like to see more Australian software companies like Atlassian.
"If you go to San Francisco or Seattle you just see this buzz because people are just creating," he says. "That is the kind of culture that needs to be bred into our society so these kids can go on to build the next Google and Facebook."
