| Fusetools CEO and co-founder Anders Lassen speaks during an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul, Oct. 23. / Courtesy of Fusetools Korea |
Fusetools CEO stresses education with easy tools
By Yoon Sung-won
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution encroaches on all, everyone is talking about new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the internet of things, big data and cloud computing like they are so natural.
But such technologies are too complicated a concept for most non-technical people to understand.
Norwegian mobile software firm Fusetools CEO and co-founder Anders Lassen stressed the importance of bridging the gap between highly complicated technologies and the general public.
"Don't rush to teach young kids complicated programming languages like Java," Lassen said during a recent interview with The Korea Times in Seoul. "We should make software development available even to young students because learning programming early can be a catalyst for other intellectual advancement. Also, teachers should have basic programming understanding because it is going to be essential in strengthening students' understanding in general not just for computer science but also for all types of disciplines."
Established in Norway in 2011, Fusetools is providing its namesake mobile application development platform "Fuse." Because it allows software developers to build apps that support multiple mobile operating systems including Google Android and Apple iOS, it is called a "cross-platform app development tool."
Without a cross-platform app development tool, companies need to hire experts who understand programming for both operating systems, which cost significant time and money, Lassen said.
"We are trying to build a middle ground where you don't need to rely on the expensive experts but you can still build very high quality apps," he said. "Fuse can be used anywhere from mobilizing enterprises down to students. Because it has an easy beginner's user interface, it opens the door even for non-technical students, teachers or people who aren't necessarily going to end up being app developers. It is still very useful for them to have some basic knowledge about how mobile technology works because it's going to be so important going forward."
Under Norway's advanced education system, Lassen started programming at the age of 12 as a hobby when he was a young boy who wanted to build video games.
"Programming with easy tools such as Visual Basic was very inspiring and opened my eyes in the early stages to make me think I could actually make computers do useful things," he said. "But 20 years later, it has become much harder to make apps today. That's maybe the main reason why we wanted to make very easy-to-run and very visually-oriented apps so that you can actually see and understand what's happening on the screen."
Fusetools chose Korea as one of two destinations to establish its first overseas branches alongside the United States. Lassen said it was a natural choice to get into the Asian market in general.
"We have seen Korea as a very high-tech country, obviously because Samsung is here along with a lot of good technology companies," he said. "Korea is also very open-minded to new technology. Fuse is radically different tool from the ones that people have used to build mobile apps. So we found Korea to be a very good place to start."
Lassen said the company is closely working with Korean IT enterprises such as Samsung and Naver to run Fuse for their mobile enterprise innovations. Besides the business sector, the company is also expanding partnerships with universities here.
Fusetools is providing its cross-platform app development tool as education material for the curriculum at Seoul National, Konyang and Gyeongsang National universities this year and is planning to provide it to six more academic institutions, according to the company.