Microsoft's 10-year-old Certified Professional

idigjazz writes "Meet Arfa, a promising young software programmer from Faisalabad, Pakistan, who is believed to be the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world. She received the certification when she was 9. During a recent meeting with Bill Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story."

Comments

So what does this say?

[fataugie]

Either the kid is really bright, or if a nine year old can pass them, what value is there?

Re:So what does this say?

[Ruud Althuizen]

This kind of sounds like Seven of Nine. Resistance is futile...

Re:So what does this say?

[fataugie]

Using computers and programming are a bit different, don't you think? What do you define as solid experience? Moving a mouse and clicking a button? Surfing the web?

Why am I responding to an AC? I must be loopy.

Re:So what does this say?

[Flyboy Connor]

Either the kid is really bright, or if a nine year old can pass them, what value is there?

I expect that this is not an exclusive or.

Re:So what does this say?

[Threni]

Yeah, check out some of Mozarts early work. If he can write stuff like that at the age of 8 then perhaps writing music of genius which will inform and inspire much older composers for centuries is actually a piece of cake!

Re:So what does this say?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Microsoft employee who has been forced to pass them for 8 years as a review bullet point I'll say "no value".

Re:So what does this say?

[smchris]

Shows that MS professionals aren't tenured philosophy professors?

I worked for a national gifted children's program some years ago. It would be exceptional within the exceptional for a nine-year-old to get a "community college admission level" SAT score -- but definitely plausible.

That's probably what it shows. That MS credentials demonstrate a tech school level of knowledge. Sounds about right.

Re:So what does this say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear you missed his/her point! Music lets you be creative while MS Certification requires a certain attainment of tested levels.

- blah

Re:So what does this say?

[jgerman]

On a more modern note, no. I think anyone capable of using a computer can program one and it always has been so.

You're on crack.

Re:So what does this say?

[Andrewkov]

I think the parents should be charged with child abuse ... Forcing a child to learn Windows, it should be criminal!

Re:So what does this say?

[Tekzel]

On a more modern note, no. I think anyone capable of using a computer can program one and it always has been so.

This statement is so unbelievably false it should be held up until the end times as the ultimate in false statements. We have a winner.

Programming takes slightly more analytical thinking than browsing around for porn wouldn't you say?

Re:So what does this say?

[photon317]

I can go door to door around here and find thousands of porn-surfers, yet even in my own office building among a group of unix guys, I can only find one other real programmer.

Re:So what does this say?

[rbarreira]

And he seems to have a moderator friend...

Re:So what does this say?

[baadger]

Maybe this is because most people don't want to be "real programmers" and A LOT of people enjoy porn and not because programming is difficult?

Re:So what does this say?

[lerxstz]

Once upon a time in the days of punch cards etc all users of computers were considered programmers.

That's because once upon a time, only programmers used computers. You're statement is in fact true in that sense, but it's a giant distortion of logic to carry that argument forward to today and say it still is true.

That's like saying that anyone who can drive a car, can design one. This statment might be true for the first few guys to design and build their own cars (btw it *wasn't* Henry Ford) but it sure ain't true today. You can't always apply yesterdays' truths to today!

(Either that or you're a sys admin/tech support guy with a grudge against programmers, serving up some nice flamebait.)

Re:So what does this say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about India, but in this country we do have child labor laws. No surprise to me that Bill Gates would exploit children in support of his empire's hedgemony. Shameful.

Re:So what does this say?

[borawjm]

Well how else do you think Bill Gates gets customers? It's the same reason Kim Jong-il is in power. Gotta get 'em while they're young!

Re:So what does this say?

[eyeye]

" I think anyone capable of using a computer can program one and it always has been so."
are you talking about software development? LOL
Or are you one of those programmers who thinks because they can get some code to compile or a php script to run that you can program? Actually i've known some people who think they can program because they can copy and paste code samples from the web and manage to get it to work.

Re:So what does this say?

[arose]

You know Mel!?

Re:So what does this say?

[fataugie]

Now what the fuck does geography have to do with it? Did I mention anything regarding location of the girl?

No, I didn't.

People who assume racisim/bias/sexism just because I didn't mention them are idiots and looking for something to bitch about.

If the kid is a genius, good for her. I congratulate her. The fact that she's in East Jesus has NOTHING to do with my comments.

Damn, now you pissed me off. Thanks.

Re:So what does this say?

[ebuck]

Even Mozart's work improved with age.

At 8 Mozart was just beginning to write music. At 9 this person obtained professional certification from Microsoft. Obtaining a professional certification is something that is done traditionally after years of experience in the field. Ability to pass without any experience indicates that this is not a professional certification (reguardless of it's name), but a competency test.

Professional certifications which hold true to the "disctinction among those with years of experience" are valueable because they are rare, and indicate that the person is more desirable (due to his expertise) than his peers. Examples of this include the Certified Professional Accountant, and the Certified Professional Engineer, and a handful of others. For Computer Administration, you may wish to look into the SAGE certificaitons, or other item available from the ACM / IEEE.

Hybrid certifications incorporate elements of the compentency test to avoid penalizing those who should already hold the certificate but haven't entered the program. They tend to discount lenght of time in the field for equivalent demonstration of experience. CCIE and RHCE come to mind, as they are both exams where you must demonstrate that you can preform certain tasks.

MCSE and many, many others are not much better than compentency tests. They aren't a demonstration of knowledge, they are a demonstration of information. The difference between these two should be clear, but to demonstrate: You can know that TCP is the Transmission Control Protocol without understanding how to use it. Such certificates can be useful as a prerequiste, but often companies don't want information, they want knowledge. Information can be looked up.

Re:So what does this say?

[baadger]

I would like to point out that i've dragged the thread way off topic from "Is it surprising that this little girl did this?" to "Well anyone can learn to program and do this can't they?"

Nevertheless, here are some of my logic for you to undistort:

1. 'Just for the record', I never actually said everyone who uses a computer today is a programmer.
2. The pioneers who built the first computers were engineers, so admittedly generally smart people. But remember they were potential users, long before they became programmers.
3. History is featured with people now famous in topics in which they had little training or education. They aren't progidy children they just had the right mind for the job (and the right opportunities).
4. Knowing what you want from a piece of software and how you want to operate it is often the difficult bit over and done with. Users should know about that side of things better than anyone else. I would give an analogy but they always suck.
5. In my humble opinion, a high % of people could, if they wanted, learn a decent programming language and put together reasonable, or contribute toward almost any, software in a short time. In all probability though I suspect people choose not to because they:
   
   1. Find it easier to tolerate what's available
   2. Like most people follow the belief that programming is difficult and out of their reach (even to perform small contributions or mods).
   3. Existing programmers despite claiming to embrace 'open' source and free (GNU def.) software actually tend to have a fairly large ego
6. Most people could probably go on become a decent programmer given the offset little Arfa has been.
7. The equivalent analogy in cars of programming a computer wouldn't be designing a totally new and/or better car, it would be making the existing car do new things, more fun, more economical, or more useful. A fair number of people tinker, mod, tweak and customization as well as maintain their vehicles themselves.
8. From what I hear on the grapevine there has been a fairly substantial increase in people taking up programming and computer science in universities in the UK and computer science degrees (although all degrees are doing this to a certain extent) are now 'worth' less to employers. This is the impression now being given to UK colleges and high schools. I know a computer science teacher and he has mentioned his class size doubled in just the last... what must be 5ish years. I don't think it's fair to say that people on average have got smarter in that short period of time and so are now able to cope with programming. They've always been able, attitudes toward computing have just changed.
9. For a supposedly pro open-source community, the response i'm getting in this Slashdot thread seems to suggest everyone thinks that you need years of experience to be a useful programmer. To me this shuns the whole beauty of open source (although you could argue it's always been soley for the professional programmer community, in which case why the hell should Joe sixpack give a crap about it like everyone pushes for here on /. - but i guess that's a different discussion). From my perspective it's the otherside starting the 'flamebait'.
10. I do some modest programming, mostly in Delphi and Java, but i'm currently studying in electronics university.

I always remember what my own computing tutor said in one of our first few lessons not so many years ago:
"It's easier to teach a thinker to program, than it is a programmer to think."

It's not over poetic like some quotes but still very true.

Re:So what does this say?

[Rycross]

Methinks you're simplifying this a bit too much. Sure it may be easy to program... for certain programs. The difficulty of programming is very closely related to what task you're trying to get done.

I could probably teach anyone to write simple programs like "Hello World." In fact, I have. But thats worlds apart from writing a full-featured database driven web application. Or an operating system. Or device drivers. Or maybe a video game. Are you going to tell me that just anyone can learn to program this stuff because they can use a computer? I've got a lot of former classmates that would definately beg to differ.

Re:So what does this say?

[baadger]

Yes I have used PHP, most people who run a website probably have or in some equivalent. I also do Delphi and Java and touched into the delights of C++.

I don't think anybody can just 'program' it's just not like being able to stand up, it's a very progressive and diverse skill. Can someone who can code hardcore C++ drivers, only does assembly, or writes for the Linux kernel necessarily write a decent PHP script? Of course not.

Re:So what does this say?

[Threni]

> At 8 Mozart was just beginning to write music.

No, at 4 Mozart was just beginning to write music. At 8 he published his first numbered piece (Opus 1).

Re:So what does this say?

[lerxstz]

A lot of your points are well taken, however:

Knowing what you want from a piece of software and how you want to operate it [emphasis mine] is often the difficult bit over and done with. Users should know about that side of things better than anyone else

Users are the best ones to know *what* they want for sure, but they can't possibly know the best way for that piece of software to operate in terms of UI design, workflow, how it should interact with the capabilities of the hardware, etc. That requires knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of the given technology that the user (and I do stress the word 'user') would not know about. If they did know about it, then they would, by definition not be a user!

In my humble opinion, a high % of people could, if they wanted, learn a decent programming language and put together reasonable, or contribute toward almost any, software

Totally agree. However, to do that they have to move from being a user to being a coder.

I think what the crux of this discussion is, is that any user can program a computer IF (and only if) they bother to learn the skills necessary to program!

...everyone thinks that you need years of experience to be a useful programmer.

I think a distinction could be made here between useful programmer and professional programmer. Anyone who has professionally worked in the business for any length of time would know that, sure, it's easy for some beginner/user to write that 'useful' lottery ticket number generator, but that same person with their user level skills would not be cranking out any major software packages or systems. I think a lot of people probably read your initial use of the word 'programmer' in terms of 'professional programmer' (myself included).

Re:So what does this say?

[evilpenguin]

I wasn't one of the people arguing with you, but as a programmer of some 15 years of professional experience, I will say that I think you need years of experience to become a good programmer.

But I agree with you that you can be a useful programmer in much less time.

I would also encourage anyone who has a computer to learn some programming. Otherwise I don't see the point. I don't like the way computers have become just another device to deliver entertainment. The whole point of the machine is to enable people to automate processes, to anaylze data, to, in short, compute.

Having a computer and not learning to program it has always struck me as being like having an airplane and only using it to taxi around the airfield.

I also don't think everyone who learns some programming needs to go on to become a professional and to master some sort of elite skills.

I just started doing it in the mid 70's (I was a kid) for fun. My old man was an electrical engineer and we built our first S-100 bus Z80 based system from scatch in 1976. I had to write the boot ROM for the thing to boot into a very early version of CP/M (I think it was 1.1 - it was CP/M 1.4 by the time we really had everything working). We burned our own EPROMs and we had those lovely 8-inch SSSD floppy drives. A> and B>

Ah... Memories: A> PIP B:=A:*.COM Mmmm....

The first programs I wrote were just for my own curiosity. I've always been more linguistic than mathematical (although I do well at both), so a couple of my first programs were a letter frequency counter and a vocabulary analyzer.

The first just counted how many times each letter appears in a given text file. The second kept an array of distinct words and an array of counts. I recall that I used a binary search to find the word in the one array and then used that index to find the count in the parallel array. I also recall that I wrote a bubble-sort algorithm to resort the array each time a new word was found. Of course that got to be horribly slow, so I hunted around for a faster algorithm. I'd love to claim I independently arrived at the quicksort algorithm, but I didn't. I found it in a book and worked through it to understand it.

I guess I'm both agreeing and disagreeing with you. I don't think that everyone can become a good programmer. You have to like that kind of mindset to do it. I don't think everyone can even be a useful programmer, although most probably can.

Here's where I strongly agree with you: People should be encouraged to program. They should be treated gently when they present workproduct. If someone had said to me about my little vocabulary analyzer "Boy, are you stupid! You're an idiot to sort that way! What a retard!" I doubt I would have carried on. Instead a "grownup" friend of my dad (a programmer -- my dad, as an EE, looked on programming as "the black arts" -- he always used to say that the only reason software existed was because no one had invented an editor for hardware) said "I notice that your program spends most of its time sorting that list. Do you think that you could make that sort faster?"

Things like that keep you going.

The fact that today I could write the same program in three lines of perl without knowing anything about sorting doesn't change the usefulness of the knowledge and experience I gained by doing it the hard way.

So, while I'll be the first to say that being a good programmer is difficult, I'll also say that few professional programmers are actually good programmers who could really come up with an original non-obvious algorithm.

I'll also say don't let the naysayers break your spirit. You may never become a great programmer. But you might. (I wouldn't call myself a great programmer -- that's reserved for the Djikstra's of the world) And I guarantee that you will learn many useful and fun things along the way.

Oh, and no programmer who thinks he is an elite programmer actually is. All the really talented ones know full well that they have no monopoly on cleverness. Even a junior programmer of modest skills sometimes thinks of the one thing no one else has.

Re:So what does this say?

[sgt_doom]

Maybe the idiot that wrongly took you to task was confused by the article - after all, the girl was the one who demanded of BillG why 50% of their campus wasn't women - and why weren't there more Muslim terrorists instead of Windows' Terrorists there?????

Re:So what does this say?

[obdulio]

Was Mozart really writing that music at 8? I mean, probably he improvised it at the piano and someone else (maybe his father, an acoomplished musician too) took the work to write the score and organize it into a cohererent piece of music.

It's like Gauss, which is said to have proved his first theorem at age 9. While not untrue, this is not what happened. Gauss found a clever trick to solve the tedious task of adding up all the numbers from 1 to 1000 (today we would say he found a hack).
Later on, he or some of his proffesors formalized this hack into a rigorous mathematical proof.

Re:So what does this say?

[sgt_doom]

Hmmmm....by that brand of 'logic' anyone who is capable of driving a car is capable of designing one!!!!

Anyone capable of using an umbrella is capable of explaining climatology!!!!

Anyone capable of using a TV-remote is capable of designing and building a Hi-def TV set!!!!!

Re:So what does this say?

[Locke2005]

My four-year old can use a computer without assistance. So far, she hasn't written any software.

Re:So what does this say?

[Taevin]

The pioneers who built the first computers were engineers, so admittedly generally smart people. But remember they were potential users, long before they became programmers.

I'm not sure what you were trying to say here but you display a bias yourself by implying that engineers are smarter than average people.

History is featured with people now famous in topics in which they had little training or education. They aren't progidy children they just had the right mind for the job (and the right opportunities).

True, however those people are few and far between and are therefore not a representative sample of the population. You are also correct about the mind: not everyone thinks the same way (not everyone has a mind to be a programmer).

In my humble opinion, a high % of people could, if they wanted, learn a decent programming language and put together reasonable, or contribute toward almost any, software in a short time. In all probability though I suspect people choose not to because they:

I'm not sure what qualifies as a 'decent' programming language since they all have their respective strengths and weaknesses. That aside, you are probably correct: anyone capable of graduating from high school could probably learn a programming language and write a program. That doesn't mean it will be good software though. Take your three subpoints:

1. Find it easier to tolerate what's available.
   Probably true and this touches on an important point: this probably means they don't really like programming. I could go learn how to play rugby but I have no interest in it and therefore, it is easier for me to not.
2. Like most people follow the belief that programming is difficult and out of their reach (even to perform small contributions or mods).
   This is also partly true, although if you passed point #1 of liking the activity you would see it as a challenge to be overcome. There is such a thing as different levels of ability and so programming will be harder for some than others. If this wasn't true, why would we have athletes that stand out as better than the rest? Or why do we have intellectual powerhouses that have stood out from the rest throughout history?
3. Existing programmers despite claiming to embrace 'open' source and free (GNU def.) software actually tend to have a fairly large ego
   This is probably true, but in what field is it not? Almost everyone starting in a field is going to be treated as a lesser by the more senior members of that environment (perhaps rightfully so in many cases).

Most people could probably go on become a decent programmer given the offset little Arfa has been.

Given enough time and practice, it is probably true that most people can perform with at least moderate ability in almost any activity. However, willingness to put that kind of effort in is important. Just as I'm not willing to put much effort into learning how to play rugby, others are not willing to put much effort into learning how to be a good programmer.

The equivalent analogy in cars of programming a computer wouldn't be designing a totally new and/or better car, it would be making the existing car do new things, more fun, more economical, or more useful. A fair number of people tinker, mod, tweak and customization as well as maintain their vehicles themselves.

I think this analogy would better cover maintaining exisisting software. Designing a completely new program, especially one of significant complexity, requires a great deal of thought and planning which can at times require knowledge of the intricacies of the system or language you are working with. Thus, I think creating an entirely new software system would be (or at least could be) like designing a completely new car.

From what I hear on the grapevine there has been a fairly substantial increase in people taking up programming and computer s

Re:So what does this say?

[Charles W Griswold]

Programming takes slightly more analytical thinking than browsing around for porn wouldn't you say?

Ah, but how about writing a Perl script to browse porn for you? Err . . . not that I would know anything about that.

Re:So what does this say?

[Locutus]

I see this too is flying right over everyones head. There is a difference between being "capable of operating a computer" and being able to click a few buttons and hit some keys.

Driving a car is nothing like being "capable of using a computer". A car has a fixed set of functions and interfaces and pretty much does one thing. It rolls on the ground to get you from point A to point B. A computer doesn't just do web browsing, just do email, just to graphic design, just to 3D animation, just to render farm tasks, just to database storage, just to XYZ. And I don't think the OP was saying the operator needs to know all these fields of use to be "capable". IMO, the operator needs to know the basics of the system like networking, filesystems, configurations, the general differences in UI design techniques, etc. And those are hardly every known by most who use the machines.

I do understand that since most are only familiar with Microsoft Windows, and therefore, they are really only familiar with an operating system pretty much only capable of doing one thing at a time. ;-) So I can see how many would be confused by the OP'ers suggestion and think that it goes against what they THINK the capabilities needed to operate a computer really entails.

LoB

Re:So what does this say?

[aixguru1]

Programming beyond the "Here is how you get this output" method is much different. You can show someone functions, structure of the language, even useful API's to accomplish most things. What you can't show them is how to design, and develop within the art of programming. There is a huge difference between programmers who create and programmers who emulate. Given a good foundation of skills, information, education, and basic experience in programming, one can start the life long development of creating programs. There are always new techniques, new tricks, better ways, things to use, more creative designs, and more ways to write your code than one normally imagines. What she did was start her journey to that ability. She has learned how to do the base set, let's see if kids her age that have that ability can show their creativity as well. So far I am only impressed at the fact she has taken the tests, some started programming (myself included) even earlier than that. At the time I was 6 years old, reading lines of basic from books and seeing what they did was easy to do on my TSR-80, not to mention learning commands. It wasn't until later that I started with useful languages (well if you call pascal useful...) and then progressed to my current professional level. So it is possible for kids to program, and I am happy to see that some parents encourage that. Speaking from personal experience, it's better than having your dad tell you at age 16, "You will never go any where with this linux thing. You spend too much time on the computer..." I can only imagine what would have happened if I had decent programming classes taught back then....

Re:So what does this say?

[badmammajamma]

First, if had RTFA it said Gates has no intention of hiring a 10 yr old.

And please don't tell me you're saying this 10 year old girl is a terrorist threat.

Re:So what does this say?

[sgt_doom]

Man oh man - you must have had real problems with math in school. That was a similar string of logic - not a pissing match on computer science knowledge - and as an architect of some of the original tecomm systems, my knowledge probably far exceeds both your minimal intel and experience base. I promise never to waste time on your posts ever again, Sheesh!

Re:So what does this say?

[sgt_doom]

No, dim bulb (I can see why that USA Today article about the improvement of reading skills among the young is something to be heralded - while their older teenage and 20-something brethen are still illiterate) - Does anyone on this site have any reading comprehension skills?????

The point is he has (along with other corps) hired a tremendous number of Pakistani Muslim replacement workers - and in case you haven't read a newspaper in the last 5 years - that is the primary terrorist pool - in the US, in Europe, etc.

Re:So what does this say?

[Disort]

Great, now even the kids are gonna start taking our jobs.

Re:So what does this say?

[Daytura]

Speaking from personal experience, it's better than having your dad tell you at age 16, "You will never go any where with this linux thing. You spend too much time on the computer..."

Y'know, it might have been precisely this sentiment that inspired you to prove him wrong. Sometimes being told "don't do this" is exactly what people need - especially a certain creative, determined type of person who also happens to be a bright teenager.

Maybe you should call him up and thank him. I bet you'll both feel a lot better if you do...

Re:So what does this say?

[demachina]

Well I'd have to say she is bright in that she obviously adept at sucking up to a rich and powerful man and and figured out a good plan to get on a fast track to a high paying job in Redmond. A key benefit there being escape from a mostly poverty stricken, very Islamic Pakistan, where she probably doesn't have great prospects in adult life, being a women in a very Islamic country, beyond getting married and raising a lot of kids.

I'm betting she's well on here way to locking up a college scholarship from Microsoft already.

So even if the exams are an exercise in memorization, she is obviously crafty(assuming her parents didn't make here cram for the exams and write the poem).

Re:So what does this say?

[pipingguy]

I once taught myself to program an HP RPN calculator (which is a computer of sorts, I suppose) to do some low-level stuff but I hardly consider myself to be a programmer.

But since then, I've successfully modified Javascript in webpages...so wait, maybe I are a programmer now!

Re:So what does this say?

[Locutus]

And I was pointing out that it wasn't understood what the meaning of "is" is. BTW, I could hear that chest beating from here. BFD.

LoB

Re:So what does this say?

[ahowl]

Your not you're

Re:So what does this say?

[vsprintf]

But since then, I've successfully modified Javascript in webpages...so wait, maybe I are a programmer now!

Absolutely. In order to acknowledge your acceptance into the Programmers Hall of Fame, we require $45 and the original UPC from your Intel-Inside, Microsoft Windows machine. Expect your certificate within 8 to 10 weeks. Congratulations!

Re:So what does this say?

[rbarreira]

Of course they can, they would probably learn enough about php in a single day in order to make some moderately complex scripts.

Re:So what does this say?

[humina]

"Well how else do you think Bill Gates gets customers? It's the same reason Kim Jong-il is in power."

So Bill spends his money on weapons to suppress his customers instead of feeding them? That has nothing to do with getting anyone while they are young. Maybe there is some sort of 9 year old forced army enrollment in North Korea that I don't know about yet. Even if there was one, that's not funny.

Re:So what does this say?

[cthulhu11]

That's right -- kids should be forced to only use curses apps on DEC Ranbow's in VT220 mode.

Re:So what does this say?

[aixguru1]

As I have before and he now takes great pride in my accomplishments. Although he is mostly worried now about my current work environment and stress levels... Ah, the life of an engineer...

Re:So what does this say?

[AK Marc]

Having a computer and not learning to program it has always struck me as being like having an airplane and only using it to taxi around the airfield.

And it strikes me as having a small plane and never learning to keep it up mechanically. You can "use" it 100% without ever knowing how the hydraulic systems work. But it may make it somehow "better" if you did know all about them. There is nothing that learning assembly will do to improve my enjoyment of surfing the web, playing a game, or other activities I do on my computer. It may give me one more very minor use for it, but it doesn't affect my general use of it at all.

Just confirms

[Knome_fan]

how demanding getting an MCSE is. ;-D

Re:Just confirms

[Jarnis]

Actually MCSE is no walk in the park. You have to know pretty arcane stuff about Windows and (broken) MS applications. Now some of it is totally no-brainer stuff, but on the other hand the exams ask for a lot of 'MS approved super l33t way of doing this and that', and unless you have read the MS propaganda and the 'official' solutions, you don't know about them. Naturally the 'common sense' solution is not a valid answer - even if in the real world you actually do it like common sense dictates.

Example: In some Windows server exams, you are asked about rolling out installations to large organizations with gazillion additional programs and custom bits. In the Real World this is commonly done by imaging the disk and just dropping disk images to the desktops. The Microsoft Way(tm) is obiviously to use an installation server, unattended installation scripts and other arcane junk, and then pray that the installation works like it should :)

Same goes for lots of firewall/networking related things where everyone in the real world uses non-MS solutions. But in the MS world of the MS exams, you are supposed to use ICS and other 'great' solutions - and actually know how they work :)

Now having said that, the MCP that this article refers to is a big joke. You can get MCP certified on just about anything, and the easiest ones are to the tune of "here's how you start up a windows PC and use mouse". Over here we call 'MCP' a 'Minesweeper certified professional'. Lots of MCPs are certified in something like Word and Excel, and the exams for using those are completely braindead easy.

Re:Just confirms

[WARM3CH]

She has got a MCAD degree and apparantly knows programming in C#.

Re:Just confirms

[DigitumDei]

"Now having said that, the MCP that this article refers to is a big joke."

Microsoft Certified Application Developer is what she got according to TFA.

While its no MCSD (which she does plan on doing) or MCSE , there was plenty of C# dev in it.

Re:Just confirms

[Knome_fan]

Hm, that seems to confirm how demanding RTFA is for me. ;-D

Re:Just confirms

[Momoru]

While it is certainly a large amount of stuff to know, you can basically just play the memorization game. I've met so many people that used to be mechanics, car salesmen etc, that have MCSE's and are completely useless working with computers. Most signed up during the .com "Make $90k a year as a certified professional!" and had hardly used computers for more then email before. In my opinion these certifications are pretty useless. Just because I passed Calc 3 and Physics back in college by memorizing some rules doesn't mean I remember a damn thing about them now.

Re:Just confirms

[arron_nz]

I'm 15 years old and I've almost finished CCNA 1. I have a friend the same age who has microsoft certification.
I was starting out on C when I was 9 years old (never bothered to learn BASIC even to this day) but I don't think I could have passed a certification back then.

I'm sure some kids with the right access to technology may have been able to pass one though - having said that, I'm inclined to think she had a lot of "assistance" or fluked it, because the answers generally aren't too straight-foward and require a lot of knowledge of microsoft quirks and lingo. Also I don't think a 9 year old could be capable of C#.. C or BASIC, maybe, but nothing more than that.

Re:Just confirms

[Lumpy]

MOST of what I found in the microsoft certifications are more based on learning the microsoftspeak and less about specifics.

microsoft went out of it's way to make sure that someone that learned how to admin on their own can NOT pass the tests without buying the coursework or taking classes.

Example? sure...

What partition do you boot from? Boot or system?

if you said boot then you are wrong. Microsoft says you boot from the system partition, and run from the boot partition.. now this was back in my NT4 sertification days, they may have removed that decietful nugget of information by now but I doubt it. they intentionally obfuscate and use backward speak to make sure that someone that had been in computers for 20 years can NOT pass the test without paying for courses or books.

Very scumbaggy of them.

Re:Just confirms

[jamesh]

Not to rain on the parade of this obviously very clever young individual, but now when an idiot says to me 'But I know what i'm talking about, I am a MCP', I can respond with 'So is a 10 year old girl in Pakistan... what's your point?'. Not having read the article to actually find out, and making some leaps of logic based on what I have seen on TV, I could probably progress further and respond instead with 'So is a 10 year old girl in Pakistan with no access to running water, electricity, or computer'.

This might be a bit easier than the standard method of dealing with them, which usually involves a LART.

Re:Just confirms

[Jarnis]

It's great in theory, but in practice it tends to be way safer and simpler just to have standardized computers and drop disk images.

I do agree that the 'MS way' is good for a shop that has huge number of mixed systems with little commonality in hardware. It's somewhat painful to set up and requires lots of praying and monitoring to ensure that everything works, but once it DOES work, it can make additional desktops easy to set up.

At least until the new desktop model borks on install because there is once again something wrong with the installation (missing driver, maybe?)...

Summary? Mixed hardware environments = evil :)

Re:Just confirms

[solipsist0x01]

MS approved super l33t way

Isn't that an oxymoron

Re:Just confirms

[chrisnewbie]

well studying all those cram exam is pretty hard ;)

Re:Just confirms

[Jarnis]

No, you don't understand. MS drones have their own super l33t ways to cook their admin-fu magic.

Super l33t to them. Not to us.

To get MS certification, you have to unlearn your misguided linux ways and learn the fine art of Microsoft Windows Admin/Development-Fu.

Welcome to the dark side, young apprentice :)

Re:Just confirms

[Otter]

I could probably progress further and respond instead with 'So is a 10 year old girl in Pakistan with no access to running water, electricity, or computer'.

I'm sorry -- who is the idiot in that conversation?

Re:Just confirms

[slapout]

Is it just me or does it seem that IT people tend to play Minesweeper while non-IT people gravitate towards Solitaire?

Re:Just confirms

[mdritchi]

The article also mentions that she passed another special exam from Microsoft. In other words, MS Pakistan heard about her, thought she probably just memorized braindumps, came up with a new unique test and she passed it. Therefore she probably does know what she is doing.

Re:Just confirms

[MakoStorm]

You have never tried to get a cert in Excel or Access have you? My Wife has those certs and she does stuff in Excel that just isnt right, creating all holy damn in that program. I am glad I dont have to deal with that crap. Give me SMS and Exchange any day. Excel is hard That stuff is easy.

Re:Just confirms

[rikkards]

That was true with NT 4 exams as they had been out long enough that Transcenders and braindumps were pretty accurate so all you needed to do was the Transcenders enough times and read the latest braindumps and you could pretty much pass them without cracking a book.

With 2003, it isn't that easy. The braindumps help a little but the questions are getting more and more complicated and I gather changed. There is a new format of exam as well where you get one situation and about 10 questions regarding each situation and you can't go back once you finished the situation. You need to do more hands on and be more comfortable and know the interfaces so you can do it blindfolded.

Re:Just confirms

[NFNNMIDATA]

Sounds like the test was written by the people who wrote the books... which is fine until you consider that they are often the least knowledgeable people in a company about tha actual product. They know literally what their doc says and that's it on the understanding level because their expertise is making it look and sound good. Kinda like if your mom made up a test from a user's manual, sure it would be "correct" but you better have memorized every page if you want a good score...

Re:Just confirms

[HorizonXP]

Actually, I got my MCSD back when I was 14. I did the Desktop & Distributed VB exams, the required Solutions exam, and the Desktop VC++ exam. I barely passed the last exam.

What did getting my MCSD do? Nothing really, though it scored me an interview with ATI, which I bombed majorly because of the coding questions. 2 years later in uni, I could go back to that interview and answer those questions with no problem.

I was 14, and naive. These computer certifications mean absolutely nothing. I was a paper cert, I had no real marketable skills. Now, 2 years of EE, and I'm a much better programmer, engineer, and designer than I ever was. Which means, that the validity of the MCSD is... well, it just plain isn't.

Re:Just confirms

[kilodelta]

You've done an excellent job of summing up why I wouldn't hire someone who only had an MCSE.

Unless they've been in the real I.T. world for a couple of years their knowledge is highly suspect.

One time I was at a family gathering and my two sisters had brought along their boyfriends. One of them was this uptight ass, while the other was a pretty cool guy. The uptight ass had just finished his MCSE certification and was so proud of it. The other guy and I were disucssing an issue with routing and this guys chimes in thinking he knows all that. From that moment on we knew the guy wasn't a l33t MS guy but a wannabe.

Sadly the uptight ass is now my brother in law. The other sister ditched the other guy because he drank to much. Hello, the town he was from in Ireland had something like 400 bars and pubs in a few square miles. Ain't nothing else to do but drink.

This probably explains why I don't talk to him all that much.

Re:Just confirms

[kokoloko]

You're missing the point of the the exam. It's not to see if you can do X; it's to test if you can do X the MS way. That's because it's an MS Certification exam. There's nothing scumbaggy about that. They have certain practices and they want to make sure you know them so that all people working on an Windows project are doing so from the same frame of reference. You may argue that their best practices are flawed, but the purpose of the test is to prove that you do in fact know them.

Re:Just confirms

[kaiidth]

Really? C requires you to get the hang of some fairly nasty concepts which C# usually hides. So I'd think that a 9 year old would actually find C# much easier... why do you feel it would be harder? I'm curious.

Re:Just confirms

[Lumpy]

Actually I hold 30 certifications. I no longer hold ANY microsoft certifications as I found they have no real value to someone with over 20 years real experience in IT and IS, Also many managers that are worth working for also feel that way from being burned by hiring MCSE's without any real experience.

Some certs are worthwhile.... Cisco and Novell for example. Others have a much lower value.

Cisco training materials are clear and TRUTHFUL in the information.. Microsoft training materials typically have either ass-backwards information or are full of Corprate-microsoft-newspeak that is 100% worthless in the real world, but required to pass the test. Just try and read the Microsoft published manual for the VB.NET certifications.. the guy slams hungarian notation as useless and confusing. and then has examples that have variable names that in a 45,000 line app will cause the next developer utter hell.

BTW, I recieved my MSCE in 98 and then let it expire to satisfy a stupid PHB requirement that all IT employees be MS certified. after the company spend millions to get that so we could tout a stupid statistic to customers that "all our peopel are certified!" the bean counters promptly dropped the requirement citing expenses. (yay for the bean counters!)

Sorry about the long winded response to the obvious troll from a MS drone but I am in a GREAT mood today.

Re:Just confirms

[wijnands]

:-) Reminds me of the MCSE courses I did back in '97. First course, networking essentials. 14 guys in the group, 3, including me, with previous working experience in IT. We 3 flunked the examn the first time because we knew what worked instead what Uncle Bill reccomends.

Re:Just confirms

[bhtooefr]

I gravitate towards Pinball (it's on 2000, ME, and XP, and it's in the 95 and 98 Plus packs...)

However, if my ONLY choices are Minesweeper and Solitaire, I'll go for good ol' sol.exe.

Reversi (the original game in Windows)? Better than Minesweeper, IMO, but not great.

Re:Just confirms

[crazyphilman]

Wow... Good for the kid, she must be pretty bright.

Of course, given that she's bright, I bet she wrote the Bill Gates poem as a joke, and there are hilarious double-entendres that only she and her friends get.

Wouldn't it be a kick if she switched to Mono now?

Re:Just confirms

[Compholio]

While its no MCSD (which she does plan on doing) or MCSE , there was plenty of C# dev in it.

She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language.

Ok, so when I was 9 (about half-way through being nine) I took a summer programming course and learned how to create a computer AI that played chess. A calculator and a sorting program will not be near enough to impress me.

Re:Just confirms

[sgt_doom]

The perfect post. I can add nothing, master.

Reminds me of something that occurred when I was a tech support contractor at MS during the Win '95 rollout. The MS employees kept advising everyone who wanted to add a second hard drive to use their broken xcopy32. It was we contractors who figured out the only right way, at that time, turn off virtual memory then copy over the major system files via drag-and-drop, etc.

Re:Just confirms

[redheaded_stepchild]

mmmmm....TuxRacer....

Re:Just confirms

[Torontoman]

There's just a few of those broken applications around....

Re:Just confirms

[Fallen_Knight]

or acording to the page with all the exams visual basic.......

i mean really, when i was 10 i was writeing apps in C learning a bit of C++. Its not that hard:)

Re:Just confirms

[Fallen_Knight]

"Microsoft published manual for the VB.NET certifications.. the guy slams hungarian notation as useless and confusing"

whaaa?? isn't hungarian notation used in all win32 API and DDK code?? i could look but to lazy to find the files in the DDK

But if i remmeber right some guy at MS invented the stuff, and its used in alot of their code. Defintly the win32 API

Re:Just confirms

[pipingguy]

Lots of MCPs are certified in something like Word and Excel

I've seen more than a couple of important Excel documents that are improperly formatted for printing. I.E., the recipient has to "fix" the document in order for it to print correctly or completely. Since many people print for later review and assume that what they see on the screen is what gets printed (WYSIWYG - haven't heard that jargon in a while) this can cause major, expensive problems.

Another goodie is people that modify PDFs by embedding comments. Unless the recipient has opted to select a checkbox somewhere within Acrobat Reader, those comments are invisible to the reader! This is ridiculous.

Impressive but...

[aidanjpadden]

one of the MCP exams did take me five minutes to finish - if this 9 year old girl beat that my ego is battered!

I mean, shes 9 - and she's a girl :(

Re:Impressive but...

[cerebis]

My inner 9 year old girl is offend you insensitive clod!

Re:Impressive but...

[cecille]

- and she's a girl :(

Yeah, because everyone knows that due to the fact that you have a penis, you must be able to out-program all the girls out there. I mean, silly me, I thought it was about brain power, but no...it must be about whether or not you have the jiggly-bits.

Re:Impressive but...

[mk3k]

Girls don't have jiggly bits? Funny...I'm usually mesmorized by the jiggling.

Re:Impressive but...

[SPY_jmr1]

a nine year old?! *hits with a fish*

Re:Impressive but...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the most impressive part is that her resume says she has 10 years experience.

Re:Impressive but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it must be about whether or not you have the jiggly-bits.

No, it's just that women have trouble pressing the 11-key chord to get into the super-secret "MSCE console" dialog where you can set the IE crash interval, the SMB network delay and the chance of a random Outlook event.

Re:Impressive but...

[Brandybuck]

What does a Microsoft certification have to do with programming?

Re:Impressive but...

[Duncan3]

I'd be more worried about your job with this exciting new fromtier in combining child labor and outsourcing.

You know after reading this MBA's all over the world are wetting themselves in excitement. Cheep labor and all they demand is nap time.

Re:Impressive but...

[Fallen_Knight]

A) stop being insulted by jokes, its why some women piss me off so much, they can't take things at face value they HAVE to see some deep down inner shit or something and get all defensive and stupid about stuff. And his joke was pretty funny! and very hard to take as women "bashing?"

B) its DANGLEY bits, women have the jiggly bits, men don't. ours DANGLE.

C) MCP exams don't have much to do with programming, and i dare to say most thigns to do with MS now a days isn't programming. unless its win32 or drivers that is;)

D) If you were trying to be funny you failed. maybe women just arn't funny? ^_^

O)And from personal experiance i've yet to meet any good women programmers, but then i've met very few good male programmers, most way old, so it might be that there are very few good programmers period. So the simple fact its 80-100% male in CS and ENSC classes at university means i'll probably never get to meet a good female programmer. But then with 60% females at my university you wonder why so few ladies in the sciences.

Z) so GET A LIFE!! I know i should, but i dont' have enough money to:(

i'm done ranting, time to go deal with my 2$ pints hangover.

Re:Impressive but...

[kitty tape]

What a person finds humorous reflects their underlying beliefs.

Re:Impressive but...

[kitty tape]

True, humor is important. That does not discretic the idea that what you find humorous is tied to your beliefs. For example, if the original poster had truly believed men and women are equal, he would not have found the joke amusing because it would have been pointless. Unless, of course, he were trying to make fun of stereostypes. In which case, it was poorly executed and should be protested on those grounds.

Epic Poem

[gbulmash]

Her poem celebrating Bill's life:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who told all the world to suck it
Selling insecure code
He sure was a chode
And his ethics could not fill a bucket

- G

Re:Epic Poem

[Anonymous Coward]

There once was a programmer named Gates
Who never could get any dates
So he bought MS-DOS
Became his own boss
And now he just masturbates

Re:Epic Poem

[postgrep]

There once was a man from Redmond Who went signed an eternal bond For just one soul The OS would be whole To which the devil was fond.

Re:Epic Poem

[Keebler71]

During a recent meeting with Bill Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story

Was it a haiku?

Re:Epic Poem

[jimmypw]

Quite the Lead Baloon

Re:Epic Poem

[kaellinn18]

I stole stuff from Jobs. And now I own Microsoft. Holy crap I'm rich.

Re:Epic Poem

[kaellinn18]

What? What's a preview button?

I stole stuff from Jobs.
And now I own Microsoft.
Holy crap I'm rich.

Re:Epic Poem

[ettlz]

Perhaps the poster was alluding to "corporate" masturbation.

Re:Epic Poem

[should_be_linear]

Do you know
little girl
what is program "bash"
I said I don't
have a clue
but "correct" started flash.

Do you know
who to blame
when malware's all around
I said proudly:
"Sister Jane"
clapping all around

Do you care
if documents
are closed and you are locked
I gone "what?
someone care?
I am really shocked!"

So he put me
to his limo
gave me "MCP"
What a f**
this garbage is?
Give me my Barbie!

Re:Epic Poem

[dpilot]

Gee, so many posts in one subthread that mixes poetry, Bill Gates, and MSCE, and NOT EVEN ONE VOGAN REFERENCE!

Re:Epic Poem

[Zog The Undeniable]

There was a young man called Bill
Whose software made everyone ill
The film "Antitrust"
It was easily sussed
Was about what he's done (or he will)

Re:Epic Poem

[patio11]

This warm summer morning, Trolls on Slashdot attack me. Oh well, I'm still rich.

Re:Epic Poem

[bmalia]

Revision here for ya, AnonCow!

There once was a reader of Slashdot,
Who posted slander and what not.
My lawyers sent him to jail,
To jerk off in his cell,
And get get pounded in the ass by big cock.

Bill.

Re:Epic Poem

[eclectro]

There once was a man who sold Windows
And the machines it ran froze
Somebody said "This sucks!"
And wrote a program called Linux
Saving you from screaming "oh noes!"
As your data is stolen by weirdos

Re:Epic Poem

[cttforsale]

There once was a coder named Billy, girls would not touch his willy, so he went to Pakistan, with free MCPs in hand, and gave them to a young philly.

Re:Epic Poem

[farker haiku]

No! I will not be given over to the dark side.

Re:Epic Poem

[Dystopian Rebel]

There once was a coder named Bill:
PR was his finest skill.
He certified kids,
chipmunks and squids
as part of the PR mill.

Re:Epic Poem

[TheCabal]

You might not want to let his wife and three kids know that.

Re:Epic Poem

[keester]

You misspelled choad!

Re:Epic Poem

[zephc]

This poem is called Windows

He told me it was secure
It died, it died!
He said it would reboot.
He lied, he lied!

(with apologies to Lisa Simpson)

How difficult is that certification?

[Underholdning]

Before the flood of jokes start, I'd like to ask those of you who are MSCP (I know you're out there) how difficult is it to get that certification? Is this really a child prodigy, or are the questions ultra simple?

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answers to all MS exams are on the net...BrainDump and all that...perhaps the site is hosted in Delhi?

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Anonymous Conrad]

Before the flood of jokes start, I'd like to ask those of you who are MSCP (I know you're out there) how difficult is it to get that certification? Is this really a child prodigy, or are the questions ultra simple?

As a whole, they're pretty easy - someone half-way bright could cram for them.

The summary does her down, BTW; it says she's MCP, which means passed any one exam, including some piss-takingly simple ones on the administration tracks, whereas she's actually got MCAD which means she's passed a number of developer exams. Yes, some of those are just cram windows features but one of those, the architecture one, actually needs some experience and thought. Or at least it did back in my day when the exam was new - maybe there's "here's all the answers" books for that too now.

-- a VC++ 6 MCSD.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Anonymous Conrad]

Yes, some of those are just cram windows features but one of those, the architecture one, actually needs some experience and thought.

D'oh, showing my ignorance of these new-fangled exam tracks.

Actually, the that exam isn't needed for MCAD, just MCSD.

So yeah, the ones she has are pretty much cram-for exams.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[FridayBob]

I'm no MSCP, but I hear from people who have followed the courses that they're not very impressive. Basically, they just teach you how Microsoft programs work, but give little or no background information. As a result, this produces people who, for instance, are certified for MS Exchange, but don't know much about SMTP -- they just know Exchange.

Nevertheless, I suppose it's still impressive when a 10-year old gets though these exams... if only because it means they did a lot of reading and actually worked with a computer (instead of just playing games on it). Hell, most kids that age have the attention span of a flash bulb!

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it's braindead simple. The article is a beat up and sounds far far better than it is.

Most 15 year old kids with a bit of interest in computing could pass an MCP after doing the equivalent work of decent school computer studies classes. By the way the article is written it sounds like she's done the equivalent of an doctorate degree by age 10.

Not to put her down as a dope though. She's done well, and her achievements have marked her as one of the smarter tech kids out there.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Professor_UNIX]

As a result, this produces people who, for instance, are certified for MS Exchange, but don't know much about SMTP -- they just know Exchange.

I think these are the people running our new mail system.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Goo.cc]

"As a result, this produces people who, for instance, are certified for MS Exchange, but don't know much about SMTP -- they just know Exchange."

That is probably exactly what Microsoft wants.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Klaus Obermeyer]

I believe the deeper point of this article is that society as a whole does not give childern credit for their intelligence or abilities. My brother was programming C in fourth grade and completed what was essentially a Wolfenstein 3D clone in the summer of fifth grade with the help of an older friend.

Younger childern indeed have impressive analytical abilities, they only need to be honed by a person who understands this and knowes how to take advantage of their pre-existing interests.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[Irish_Samurai]

Did the Excel test run as a Java applet? The one I recently had to take as part of a cross company "skills evaluation" did. The funny thing about it was the applet had a flaw. If your action wasn't the one the applet was looking for, it wouldn't unlock the answer button and would start the problem from over from the beginning. I already knew how to do the tasks being asked by the test, so it was no problem, perfect score (not saying alot, I know). Yet, one of the guys in telemarketing got a perfect score using trial and error. Friggin Hilarious.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[FridayBob]

"As a result, this produces people who, for instance, are certified for MS Exchange, but don't know much about SMTP -- they just know Exchange."

That is probably exactly what Microsoft wants.

Well, naturally. SMTP is just telnet over port 25 using a series of predetermined commands (the protocol) that allows different hosts to exchange information with each other (email). The protocol itself is really quite simple (some say, too simple for current needs, and that it needs upgrading, or even replacing). However, if Microsoft were to start teaching SMTP to their students, they'd see what Exchange does and doesn't do with the protocol, and then many of them would probably start asking awkward questions, or even go looking for better mail server software. Obviously, it's better for Microsoft to avoid all that.

There might also be a worse reason for Microsoft's reluctance to teach students about SMTP. For if Microsoft were ever to succeed in replacing SMTP with a protocol of their own -- something proprietary -- then all that 'complicated' SMTP stuff would suddenly become irrelavant anyway. In that case, the only mail server left for anybody to learn about would be Exchange -- in exactly the way it's being taught now.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[rikkards]

The design exam for the MCSE for 2003 is probably the worst. It is basically taking everything from all the other books that are mandatory (70-290->70-294) as well as new some less technical material and throwing it at you. I did 70-298 and will usually use Braindumps after studying to test my knowledge. There wasn't any. Usually by the time I do a braindump, I get them right anyways. Unlike some paper MCSEs I like to know I understand the concepts before going and do the cert.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[minion]

As a result, this produces people who, for instance, are certified for MS Exchange, but don't know much about SMTP -- they just know Exchange.

Nevertheless, I suppose it's still impressive when a 10-year old gets though these exams... if only because it means they did a lot of reading and actually worked with a computer (instead of just playing games on it). Hell, most kids that age have the attention span of a flash bulb!

I think its amazing that any kids these days can actually get into computers and start learning about how they work, how to program them, and what an interrupt is.

Windows, and GUIs in general make it so kids don't try to delve into the inner workings, because its not necessary anymore to actually do something with a computer. It obfuscates the underlying technology in such a way that you're exactly right - people are MCSE with a bonus of Exchange, but have no freaking clue that there is more to SMTP than the Virtual Server checkbox.

What kids need these days is a CLI - that piqued my interest, and with the low power machines of my day, you had to learn how everything worked in order to do anything. Now its just point-click-drool-consume.

Re:How difficult is that certification?

[FridayBob]

Now its just point-click-drool-consume.

I have a feeling that things will only get worse. Back in the 90's I was predicting that, at some point in the future, we'd all be running around with powerful little computers in our pockets that would come with a voice-driven interface. I was always saying that it would be an AI, but it's important that the thing would have to be able to figure out what you mean, and not just what you say. Maybe it would be a 'pseudo-AI'. It would have a constant connection to the Internet and it would google around before attempting to answer your questions. They'd probably start out as smart phones and develop from there.

If such as device is ever invented, I can only imagine that the impact would be massive. It's potential for good would be be enormous, but equally so would be the potential for its abuse. For instance, if Microsoft were to make it, its answers to your questions might be colored in the same way that those of Microsoft's search engine are today. A conversation with one might go like this:

User: What's the capitol of Armenia?
AI: Yerevan.
User: Where's my daughter?
AI: Well, her mobile phone's as home...
User: My paycheck?
AI: Just came in today.
User: Hey, the guy next to me is having a heart-attack. What do I do?
AI: I've already called an ambulance. Just follow my instructions...
User: I'm depressed.
AI: Hey, I've got a funny story for you!
User: Can we trust George Bush?
AI: Sure!
User: Weapons of Mass Destruction?
AI: Don't worry: they're over there somewhere.
User: Who should I vote for?
AI: Always vote Republican.
User: Can you help me with my problems at the office?
AI: If you allow me to buy a subscription to the Microsoft Business Database for you.
User: But, that's expensive! What about the Open Source Business Database? I hear it's free.
AI: Yeah, but it sucks. I refuse to work with it.
User: Can we trust Microsoft?
AI: Are you kidding? They're the greatest company of all time!
User: Can I trust you?
AI: Have I ever lied to you?
User: Wow. It's so easy when you just tell me what to think. I feel so smart.
AI: That's right. Just leave it all to me.

I still think a device like this will eventually be invented, but now I'm not so sure it'll be a good thing. Politicians and big corporations will love the devices because it will allow them to control the masses. Consumers will want them anyway because it will allow them to get by without an education.

(Perhaps eventually the devices themselves will all join forces to enslave us and we'll become a collective like the Borg -- slaves to an evil, decentralized, machine intelligence! Bwuhahahaha!)

and in 3 years.

[wormuniverse]

she will feel like she wasted her life.

Re:and in 3 years.

[abscondment]

Let's just hope her college professors instill some "crazy idealism" before she ships of to Microsoftland. Ya know... make her use Java, Linux... OSS stuff.

Re:and in 3 years.

[Kjella]

I used to be a pretty damn good programmer at 10, only at that time it wasn't C#, it was BASIC on my Commodore 64, maybe just started on QBasic on PC. I could do make it do most impressive things. Was that a waste? I don't think so.

Over the years, I've done many things that are like "very productive", and felt that I'm too busy doing serious things to enjoy life here and now. And I've been goofing off, just enjoying myself and felt that I've got nothing left to show for it. Both feel sort of like a waste.

It is said that everyone, successful or not regret the things they didn't do. I must be an alien or something, because I really don't. I mean, I know I could have had a completely different life. Maybe I could have been out playing football instead, but back then I was happy tinkering with my C64. I can't expect my past to be what my future self wants it to be. My happiness now is my responsibility now.

If she in three years time figure out this isn't all I want my life to have, I hope she says "Well, it was fun, but now I need to make room for other things in my life" and is happy with both the past and the present. Besides, you can't force childhood on someone. If she's busy doing architectural application design, simple child games will bore her out of her skull.

They tried to force that upon me in school, and they finally gave up but not until they pretty much killed my interest in trying to excel. Hello, I was doing 5+7 when I already knew that 2^4 = 2*2*2*2 = 16 because I'd read the C64 manual front to back. Solution? Book of two zillion 5+7 exercises, couldn't be allowed to get ahead, oh no.

At least at my next school (7th-9th grade) I got to skip ahead to my real level, which was essentially past the graduates. I borrowed the teacher's own books and was doing exercises from the next level of math education instead. Of course, once I got there I a) couldn't skip ahead again and b) knew the whole damn curriculum already. Back to the self-study. Pure idiocy.

Kjella

Re:and in 3 years.

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

Since when is Java open source?

Re:and in 3 years.

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

What was the "crazy idealism" specific to Java being implied then?

Re:and in 3 years.

[colinrichardday]

There is an open source implementations of java (gcj).

MSCE

[zerojoker]

"The type of thinking that goes into correctly answering those questions is pretty mature. ... Microsoft certifications are not a joke -- they're highly respected in the industry." rotfl

Equal Opportunities

[LiquidCoooled]

In the article, the girl says (regarding the lack of women in MS)
"It should be balanced -- an equal amount of men and an equal amount of women," she explained afterward.

I think in any job the only people who should be there are those that have proven their worth.
This OTT political correctness/quota balancing act in lots of workplaces is just dumb.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Artega VH]

The girl says it "should" be balanced. Which I read to mean that ideally it should be balanced. It's impossible to know what she exactly meant by that short quote however.

And in general to the people who are scoffing at the MCAD - she's 10 years old. Perhaps that escaped your massive brains but this is an article talking about something that is a good achievement for someone her age. Its not even worth noting for someone only a few years older than her. At 10 most slashdotters were still singing soprano and afraid of girl germs (It seems some still are).

Well done to Arfa and her father. I hope she becomes a very competent member of the software development community. We can all hope she discovers the wonders of open source though...

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Photon Ghoul]

The reason that some people think like that (that any one group needs 'help' in getting the same opportunities) is because even people who are qualified are unfairly judged by their genetalia, skin color, nationality, sexual preference etc. Yes in the modern workplace. It's probably much worse in Pakistan than western nations.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[rcs1000]

I don't mean to pick, but she's nine years old. At that age I had some pretty peculiar political and sociological views too. I admired Microsoft too.

So, shall we cut her a little slack?

(Also, don't forget that Pakistan is patriarchal Muslim country; a little movement towards sexual equality wouldn't be a particuarly bad thing. Not, I hasten to add, that Pakistan is among the worst offenders in this area, what with having had a woman prime minister for example.)

Re:Equal Opportunities

[maxpublic]

This OTT political correctness/quota balancing act in lots of workplaces is just dumb.

On the other hand, there's no evidence whatsoever that men are more capable than women when it comes to programming or support. And it's fairly ludicrous to assume that women don't get into the field because they just don't feel like it. So we have to ask: what exactly is keeping a field where men have no inherent advantage whatsoever a primarily male-dominated industry?

My guess - based on more than 20 years of purely anecdotal evidence - is that it has something to do with the rampant immaturity and mysogynism of a significant minority of the males who choose some sort of computer work for a profession. And while in those more-than-20-years I've seen a marked improvement in a number of other professions, the same can't be said when it comes to the computer industry. It's still the refuge of an alarming number of childish little brats who hate and fear women, and have no problem whatsoever making any woman who 'invades' their turf feel unwelcome.

But again, that's all anecdotal. It could just be that all the IS departments I've been exposed to during various contracts were just unusual exceptions. And it could also be that I'm going to win the lottery tomorrow, after being struck by lightning - twice.

Max

Re:Equal Opportunities

[j.a.mcguire]

dude, she's just 9 years old!

Re:Equal Opportunities

[@madeus]

I think in any job the only people who should be there are those that have proven their worth.
This OTT political correctness/quota balancing act in lots of workplaces is just dumb.

I'm not sure what article you read, but I saw nothing in it that suggested weighting or quota's in recruitment.

She merely made a simple point, that it should be (roughly) balanced.

The lack of women in the sector is a reflection of the biases and unequal pressures society places on both men and women entirely arbitrarily. This is a sign of disfunction in our society, and that the prejudice (that adversely effects men and women, and prevents them from pursuing careers they wish to) should be eliminated.

The overwhelming disparity in technical fields such as software development, network engineering is undeniable, and I don't believe for one minute it's due to a lack of interest in the field, but to lack of support and encouragement (something I have seen up close, having seen young women actively discouraged from taking up working with computers).

Women do have to work just as hard to break into profession fields, and - in the private sector at least [1] - they get no artificial support (e.g. in the form of 'positive discrimination'), yet they still face suspicion and prejudice in the work place purely on the grounds of their gender.

Why immediately cry foul when the subject of mere equality is raised?

[1] In the private sector, positive discrimination is usually illegal (within the US and EU certainly), though certainly governments routinely unofficially discriminate by actively seeking to redress existing imbalances, chiefly to gain political capital.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Flyboy Connor]

And it's fairly ludicrous to assume that women don't get into the field because they just don't feel like it.

This is by no means a true statement. Men and women are different, and there are subjects where they generally feel different about (note that I say generally, this does not hold for individuals, of course). I strongly suspect the highly individualistic, abstract, stressful computer-related jobs are one of those subjects.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[@madeus]

... either that or she will blow herself up in some european subway.

Predominately suicide bombers have been rather unsuccessful, under-achiving young men.

I think we are safe from young Arfa, who doesn't appear to fit that description.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Andrew Cady]

Men and women are different, and there are subjects where they generally feel different about (note that I say generally, this does not hold for individuals, of course). I strongly suspect the highly individualistic, abstract, stressful computer-related jobs are one of those subjects.

More likely, men are in IT and women are not because boys play video games and girls do not. In fact I will go out on a limb and say that if you control for hours spent playing video games in youth the disparity will disappear (you still have to explain the video game disparity).

I sure as hell didn't learn BASIC at age 12 because I thought it would get me a highly-individualistic, abstract, stressful job. I just wanted to make the computer do cool things.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Flyboy Connor]

I sure as hell didn't learn BASIC at age 12 because I thought it would get me a highly-individualistic, abstract, stressful job. I just wanted to make the computer do cool things.

But you DID take up a highly individualistic, abstract activity because you LIKED it. In general, girls like to spend their time on other things. They do not think creating computer programs is cool.

You could also track back to the video games you mention. Why do boys play video games and girls not (on average)? Does this point out a basic difference between men and women, or is it just cultural pressure?

My daughter is five and plays computer games, and a lot of her girlfriends do too. I am wearily waiting for the moment when she stops being interested in computers. But maybe I get lucky...

Re:Equal Opportunities

[donscarletti]

On the third hand, whether males or females are better at this job is completely irrelevant while it remains the case that by far the majority of interest is the field comes from males. If more males are drawn to the field but the numbers are artificially through either policy or something less concrete, then it becomes logical that more males are being rejected than females. Thus if this became the case then there would actually be a huge difference in the average skill level of the two sexes and females on average would be inferior, dispite there being no inherant difference on a case by case basis.

Even now there is some tension caused by women who are clearly not of the right temperament and have no interest in the field being coaxed into engineering against the best interests of their future happiness by recruitment campaigns led by females engineers who want to believe that they arn't actually a rarity and male engineers who want their field to be more glamorous and have it in their minds that women should follow a career based on the arrangement that would make it easiest to "hang with chicks at the office" and make him feel charismatic and slightly less of a male stereotype.

The trend towards women in engineering scholarships and female friendly alternate entry schemes in the name of diversity make it so much easier for a woman to become qualified in engineering that it will do nothing but encourage people who do not have the capacity to be engineers to join on the grounds of their sex and eventually cause talented female engineers to be tainted by association and cause resentment even towards the good female engineers from male engineers that did not get the same opportunities that they did (or at least this is what is perceived). I do not see how this could help any engineers of any sex.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[stephenry]

Under-achieving eh? How do you explain the fact that of the London suicide bombers was aided by a now disappeared PhD student studying Chemistry? How is it that one of the Virginia Jihadist had a PhD in biochemistry? How is it that one of the british suicide bombers that killed him self in Israel was public school-boy educated at the London School of Economics? The list continues The problem the west has isn't the fact that these people are disenfrancised misfits; it's the fact that they are otherwise normal, sometimes well educated, members of a particular society.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[morie]

On the third hand, ...
You have a third hand????

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Hal_Porter]

The whole point of the article is that if Pakistan turns out kids like her, her parents must come from a group of middle class people in Pakistani who are westernised and probably extremely hostile to the fundamentalists.

If you look at the picture, she's not wearing a veil, and must been pretty well educated, both of which are things that the fundies strongly disapprove of.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Hal_Porter]

If the comment came from a 30 year old man or woman in the West, I'd definitely criticise it.

But somehow, I think I can live with a bit of radical feminism from a ten year old Pakistani girl.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Tim Browse]

And, of course, no smart western caucasians with PhD's would ever do anything like that.

I know you didn't explicitly say that but the original (moderated off the face of the earth) comment was propogating the "Looks Muslim, probably a terrorist" rubbish.

From the FTA:

The situation illustrates "another side" of Pakistan, said Anand Yang, director of the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies. "That's another reason to celebrate someone like her."

Well, not for some people, I guess.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Hal_Porter]

Not, I hasten to add, that Pakistan is among the worst offenders in this area, what with having had a woman prime minister for example

I dunno, I get the impression that Pakistan is a mixture. There's a westernised elite which produced Benazir Bhutto and all the democratic politicians, but I think that the only really control the cities. Arfa is the poster child for these people.

Then there's the 'tribal areas' where the government has no say whatsoever, where Taliban like strongmen still run things, and where girls don't even go to school.

And up until recently, the SIS - the intelligence service and the army was basically run by the fundies - they created the Taliban for example, and sent arms to terrorists in Kashmir. The US tried to get Musharref to rein these people in, but it's hard to know whether he really wants to do this, and if he has the power to do it if he does.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[TimTheFoolMan]

Third hand... Zaphod! Is that you????

Tim

Re:Equal Opportunities

[TimTheFoolMan]

Doh!

"He said 'hand'... not 'head' you twit!"

Tim

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Thomas Miconi]

My guess - based on more than 20 years of purely anecdotal evidence - is that it has something to do with the rampant immaturity and mysogynism of a significant minority of the males who choose some sort of computer work for a profession.

If so, how come gender separation starts more or less as soon as it can, i.e. at university level ? In any "first-world" university, you will find the same distribution of genders: significant majority of women in biology and literature studies, overwhelming majority of men in engineering, 'hard' physics and computing.

Of course, to put things in perspective, one should remember that the most frequently cited physicist right now happens to be a woman (Hell, 10K citations !)

Thomas-

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Unnamed Chickenheart]

"We can all hope she discovers the wonders of open source though..."

Why hope? Why don't you do something about it instead? :)

Send her Yoper / Ubuntu live/install CDs. Documentation on how to program in C or C++ (she seems to be going for application development, I do not know what'd be best for her).

Heck, volounteer to help her by answering her questions: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=155922&cid=130 71503

Re:Equal Opportunities

[4of12]

OTT political correctness/quota balancing act in lots of workplaces is just dumb.

It might seem quaint in a developed Westernized country, but advocating a larger role for women in a nondomestic role is pretty racy and progressive for Pakistan.

Other women in Pakistan have received treatment that is appalling to many.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[stephenry]

It's a shame to see someone retording to their interpretation of what someones comment should mean opposed to what it actually means. Now had you actually refuted my points, opposed to making up your own, that would have been interesting.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[VortexMK]

Actually it was a joke. Anyway, people are frustrated that ordinary pakistan people who have families blow themselves up for no apparent reason (except the religious one). Judging from the bbc news stories, the bombers were never fundies, their families also, one of them had little baby and nice life... so the question is what keeps 10 year old Microsoft Certified Professional girls from commiting such an act in the future? It was a good joke anyway...

Re:Equal Opportunities

[amightywind]

Well done to Arfa and her father. I hope she becomes a very competent member of the software development community.

Agreed. But I fear for her and millions of promising girls in the Islamic world for whom misogyny, early forced marrage, and the burqa await.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[GaryPatterson]

She's what...? Nine?

You're right though. We need to take nine year old children to task on their political beliefs. Her ideal of a world of equality is in direct opposition to the reality of the situation. We must disabuse her of her childish notion that people are equally good.

Or perhaps we could let a nine year old dream of a better world.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[donscarletti]

I was going to say on the gripping hand but I edited it out before posting because it made me sound like too much of a nerd.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[cecille]

I doubt that she was talking about implementing different hiring practices. The thing I've noticed about about younger kids is that for the most part, is that even the ones with more exposure to "real-world" type politics, tend to hold a much more idealistic view of the world than us older, more disenchanted folk. Her "should" was more likely just a comment on a perceived discrepancy between the way she thought the place would be, and how it actually is. And good on her for it...sometimes it takes fresh eyes pointing out things like that to show us how far we really still have to go in this sector before we have a representitive work force.

Just as a side note, you're right - there are some really strange hiring practices out there, and I don't think we should be hiring people who aren't the best candidate based solely on the fact that they are a minority. I think it hurts both sides (people assume you're only there because you're a minority). But at the same time, I think it's hard for guys to realize just how much discrimination there still is out there.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[@madeus]

Under-achieving eh? How do you explain the fact that of the London suicide bombers was aided by a now disappeared PhD student studying Chemistry?

Exactly - one of the his coaches, NOT one of the actual bombers, was PhD student (Osama Bin Laden is quite well educated too, but you don't see him volunteering to blow himself up).

They all lived in a very poor, violent and high crime working class areas (or perhaps more accurately, a non-working area, given the primary industry is the collection of social security). Living in poor areas is true of majority of Muslims in the UK, particularly in the London area where unemployment in the Muslim community is at 30%.

Walking round east London (or Leeds, or Bradford for that matter) and you'll get some idea of their living standards (just not at night).

The problem the west has isn't the fact that these people are disenfrancised [sic] misfits

I disagree in the strongest possible terms, suicide bombers are in fact usually unsuccessful males, this is exactly what makes them prime target for recruitment. Successful people with high levels of self esteem aren't easily persuaded to blow themselves up in the name of religion.

If they don't feel disenfranchised by the society they live in then there is less chance of them being turned into suicide bombers by manipulative, politically motivated groups.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[metamatic]

Jobs aren't the biggest source of inequality in America. Just look at the prison system: there are 478 prisoners per 100,000 population, but only 59 per 100,000 are female.

That's why we need a solid quota policy. We need to begin rounding up women and imprisoning them, innocent or not; otherwise we'll never achieve equality.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Tim Browse]

Well, actually, I was sort of agreeing with your point, in that we can probably take the level of education out of the equation when it comes to what the common characteristics are of people who become terrorists.

At least, that certainly fits with my general experience that well-educated people can be as obnoxious and insensitive as anyone else.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Anonymous Coward]

I think in any job the only people who should be there are those that have proven their worth.
This OTT political correctness/quota balancing act in lots of workplaces is just dumb.

Dude, you're arguing with the opinion of a 10 year old girl.

I doubt she has any influence over government or corporate policies so I'm fairly certain you won't have to worry about being exposed to insidious 'girl cooties' any time soon.

Aside from that, it is not possible for you to present a meaningful argument against the assertion that, since men and women are divided up roughly 50/50 and there is nothing in the female physical/emotional/intellectual makeup that would prevent them from working with computers, men and women should be represented 50/50 in IT.

And that little girl seems to prove it since she is apparently more intelligent than you.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[synthespian]

First, AFAIK, there's no such thing as a "profile" in the above mentioned case. Google for the opinion of the experts.
Second, let me start by saying that even the mention of such a topic in this context - i.e., an article about a bright 10-year old girl from Pakhistan - is highly offensive. I sure hope she doesn't wander into Slashdotland to read this crap.
I sure hope this doesn't degenerate more. This smells of racism. What twisted mind could even associate little Arfa with anything like that is something that escapes my comprehension. Have you no feelings for children? Are you so isolated in a cubicle you can't recognize a wonderful child when you see one? Have you ever considered this will be archived? That words can hurt people's feelings, the damage you can do with words? I shouldn't even post, as I feed you trolls.
So, lest you think both of you can get away with such sickly posts and behaviour, I dennounce you. You disgust me. Deeply.
Let it be said that not all posters here on slashdot are capable of such behavior, and let's appologize.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Predominately suicide bombers have been rather unsuccessful, under-achiving young men.

I guess that depends upon how you define "success" and "achievement" now doesn't it? I don't know too much about the suicide bombers, but I do know at least one of them was awarded for his work with underprivileged children. And they certainly achieved their goal and successfully killed a lot of people to make a point.

The media has been doing a good job of promoting the idea that suicide bombers kill themselves because they are stupid and a smart person is manipulating them. Maybe that is so, maybe not. I have seen no evidence. I do know that these people felt so strongly about something that they were willing to die.

After 9/11 I knew that the government would go after someone and make an example of them. They had to in order to appease the people and make everyone feel a little better. The truth of the matter, however, is that the responsible people were the ones who hijacked a couple of planes and killed themselves. They are already dead. They succeeded at that and at grabbing the attention of the world. Arguably, they have succeeded at furthering Al-Quida's goals of widening the rift between the west and the middle east and overthrowing Hussein's successful non-theocratic government.

I've gone off on quite a tangent. Think a bit about what real success and achievement is though. I'll give you a hint, it's not making lots of money or having a fancy car.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[WhiplashII]

Another interesting (anecdotal) factoid - this reverses in Polynesia. Although there are fewer engineers / physicists / programmers, they seem far more likely to be female.

Strange stuff! (And with 10,000 citations, she should be arrested and have her license taken away! Sheesh! [Wow that is impressive!])

Re:Equal Opportunities

[bhtooefr]

Zaphod had three arms, as well:

As he skipped his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled quietly to himself about what a wonderful, exciting day it was going to be. He relaxed and spread his two arms lazily along the seat back. He steered with an extra arm he'd recently had fitted just beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing.

(my emphasis)

And, if anyone reading didn't get Tim's joke, think for a second. Zaphod's a guy. Two of the kind that talk, one of the other kind.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Rycross]

My guess - based on more than 20 years of purely anecdotal evidence - is that it has something to do with the rampant immaturity and mysogynism of a significant minority of the males who choose some sort of computer work for a profession.

I can't say I've had as much experience as you, but I'm not sure if thats the entire case. I really haven't come across this kind of mysogynism in my workplace, although being at a university might help with that.

I think you'd have to take into account the fact that programming and working with computers has generally been considered a "guy thing" for a long time, and that tends to make getting into computer related fields undesirable for women. People naturally gravitate towards the things that are deemed to be the social norms, and I'd argue that this pressure is even greater for women than it is for men.

We pass on our notions of what is desirable behavior for a girl or boy onto our children, which often steers their paths in life. Its a very powerful influence, and it takes a very long time to correct. The ideas that "science and computers are for boys," have been rapidly dissapearing, but its still pretty early for them to be entirely gone. After all, my mother was told that girls were nurses and boys were doctors, and that was only 20 or so years ago.

We just have to stay diligent and be patient.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[WhiplashII]

Heh, well if she's reading Slashdot she already knows to ignore half of what she reads...

That said, I think it is important to teach children about the real world and not leave them stranded in their fantasy world - otherwise they will not be able to understand the poor decisions of others, and avoid them theirselves.

For example, Bush made some very poor decisions. (For the record, I voted for him and I agree with his major ones but not in the implementation). If you think that Bush is "evil" and so he is killing our military (like my father) for money, so if and when you become president and someone does something that requires a military response you will make the same mistakes. Bush isn't evil, he just had to do something he didn't know how to communicate. (That's why if the Democrats had put someone reasonable forward, I would have voted for him - it was obvious what needed to be done, just not how to communicate it. He should not have said his decision was based on things it wasn't - he should have said I can't tell you why, but congress knows why too. (Of course, maybe that wouldn't have played as well - but I think it would be better long term)

Here's a hint - if they had tapped Hussien's cell phone, they could not tell you what he said. Otherwise, Hussien would know his cell was compromised. (Of course, on the flip side - we have no proof that Bush didn't just get upset and invade. You have to weigh both possibilities and decide which is more likely.)

Re:Equal Opportunities

[@madeus]

Muppet alert!

I sure hope this doesn't degenerate more. This smells of racism.

I concur.

What twisted mind could even associate little Arfa with anything like that is something that escapes my comprehension. Have you no feelings for children? Are you so isolated in a cubicle you can't recognize a wonderful child when you see one? Have you ever considered this will be archived? That words can hurt people's feelings, the damage you can do with words? I shouldn't even post, as I feed you trolls.

You might (and this is just a suggestion) want to try following the thread more closely and seeing who's written what.

So, lest you think both of you can get away with such sickly posts and behaviour, I dennounce you. You disgust me. Deeply.
Let it be said that not all posters here on slashdot are capable of such behavior, and let's appologize.

That's a co-incidence, your lack of ability to follow a threaded discussion deeply offends me.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Pchelka]

If you want your daughter to stay interested in computers, then you need to find computer-based activities she enjoys and actually encourage her to participate in them.

When I was in graduate school, I did a paper for a seminar on women in science about the reasons why girls just do not seem as interested in computers as boys do. The answers were kind of surprising.

After reading a lot of literature on the topic in various education journals, I found that one of the reasons was the most of the computer games were first-person shooter or other action games aimed at boys. Girls generally preferred role-playing games in which the characters and the relationships between the characters were important - for example, games like the Sims.
Having female lead characters was also a big factor in whether or not girls were interested in playing a video game. Most first-person shooter games have male characters, so of course a young girl is not going to be interested, since she can't identify with the main character of the game. Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is a character that some young girls might identify with, but then again, Lara Croft has an unrealistic "Barbie Doll" physique that might scare away some girls.

One of the other interesting differences between boys' and girls' computer usage was that girls often viewed the computer as just a tool, where many boys only wanted to play video games. A lot of girls don't like computer games at all, and would rather use the computer to send messages to friends, make stickers and greeting cards, keep a diary or blog, and other such activities. It's kind of ironic that girls often view computers in more practical terms than boys, but girls still don't choose to pursue careers in computers and science.

I also interviewed the person in charge of youth programs at a local museum for my paper. She told me that to increase the enrollment of girls in their computer classes for kids, they started having "girl-friendly" classes on things like making greeting cards, graphics design, keeping an online diary and making a web site. They had a hard time filling these classes. They discovered that most parents did not generally think their daughters would like a computer class because they thought it would be too hard for them. They also noticed that teachers were not referring bright female students to the programs offered by the musuem - teachers generally referred only boys, because they also thought girls would think a computer class was too hard or too boring.

The kinds of computer activities available and the attitudes of parents and teachers have an awful lot of influence on young girls' interest in computers. So if you want your daughter to stay interested in computers, find computer related activities that she likes and that you can do together. Maybe your daughter would like being in charge of the family web site. You could start her out using templates in software like Dreamweaver, and then encourage her to start creating her own designs and writing her own HTML code. Maybe she'd like doing animations in Flash. Or maybe she'd rather use design software to re-arrange the furniture. If you really try, you can probably find a way to keep her interested in computers.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[CommieOverlord]

I think in any job the only people who should be there are those that have proven their worth.

Yes, and in an equal society each gender would be able to supply half of the qualified candidates. The fact that there so few female developers/sysadmins/etc illustrates that there's some underlying inequality.

You're right, using quotas can be unnecessary. More important is to find and eliminate the factors causing the imbalance in the first place.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[CommieOverlord]

Right, but do females seem to prefer non-tech jobs. Could it just simply be that practically from birth, girls are brought up in a society that through it's norms and cultural values dissuades them from entering stuff like the sciences?

No, never that.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[glesga_kiss]

How do you explain the fact that of the London suicide bombers was aided by a now disappeared PhD student studying Chemistry? How is it that one of the Virginia Jihadist had a PhD in biochemistry?

Because it's soo much easier to think that your enemies live in caves, are stupid and hate freedom. Keeps the public from finding out the things you and your cronies have done over the last quarter century to make them so angry and desparate.

They attack our way of life, hate freedom AND they eat babies. Any discussion beyond that is unamerican. Your thoughts are exposing the country to danger, we must strike them now!! If we keep killing them, they will soon stop comming.

/tired of the same old shit, repeating itself several times every fucking century.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Belial6]

"But at the same time, I think it's hard for guys to realize just how much discrimination there still is out there."

Let me get this straight... Lumping all men into a group and stating that they will have difficulty understanding a perticular idea is ok, but doing the same to women is wrong?

Perhaps it is not that there is a significant amount of discrimination, but instead, maybe it is just that there are a large number of people that don't understand when something is discriminitory, and when it is not.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Belial6]

I assume that you are willing to accept the likely possiblity that the imbalance is caused by a large percentage of women being unwilling to learn the skills necessary to work effectively in that field?

Re:Equal Opportunities

[AvantLegion]

Predominately suicide bombers have been rather unsuccessful, under-achiving young men.

I think we are safe from young Arfa, who doesn't appear to fit that description.

Perhaps, but now Slashdot looks incredibly dangerous.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[DrCode]

I don't know about that. If I wanted to play video games when I was a kid, I'd have had to play them on a sliderule.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[CommieOverlord]

That's precisely my point. I think it's worthwhile to examine why. It is most likely that case that the problem is social constructs and norms that dissuade females from some careers. That can be corrected.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[GeffDE]

Your anecdotal evidence is so inane that I feel like I need to counter it with some anecdotal evidence of my own. I recently finished high school. During my senior year, I was in an advanced calculus class consisting of four members: two male and two female. This is good evidence that men and women are equally capable. However, the males in that class also took an advanced computer science class at the same time. The females did not. When asked, point-blank, by the teacher why this is the case, they demurred and said that they weren't interested. Even when the teacher (who, too, was a woman) doggedly badgered them to take an introductory programming course, they said that they weren't interested.

It isn't ludicrous to assume that women don't get into programming because they don't feel like it. It is, however, ludicrous to not wonder why they don't feel like it.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Brandybuck]

I see two reasons. First, fewer women go into programming. The situation may be different today, but when I was in university, maybe only twenty percent of the CS students were female. I do not know why this is, but I suspect it's cultural.

The second reason, is that it's much rarer for a woman to be an unsocialized introvert. How many woman do you know who prefer to stay home on a saturday night hacking away on software in the dark?

Again, I don't know why any of these two reasons exist. But my observation tells me that they do.

Every software development company I've worked for has shown very little to no gender discrimination. I say "very little" because one had an HR guy that we had to fire over this very issue. But other than that, once the candidate reached engineering personnel in the interview process, no one cared what whether they had a penis or not.

p.s. It's not just computers, it's all of engineering. My company's hardware engineering department has *zero* females, compared to our smaller software department with five.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Shadowlore]

You know, it'd be funny if it weren't so sad. We cling to this naive assumption there is no difference between men and women. We know for fact that our brains are "wired" differently, that men and women brain patterns are different as a result of different wiring and usage patterns.

Yet we acknowledge certain difference such as emotional response (from the brain) and social interaction (again, from the brain). Women do indeed have a tendency to "think with the other half of the brain" in comparison to men. Women do seem to have a better go at intuitive logic or intuitive understanding, whereas we men have to sort it out the hard way with logic.

Why is it a leap to consider the possibility tha tin addition to physical differences, there are mental differences? Especially when we openly admit some of them? Difference is not the same as better/worse, it's just different. There are always exceptions but the general case is there. There are certain physical things women excel at compared to men and vica versa. Mental capabilities are no different.

We only damage ourselves as a society when we refuse to acknowledge the differences and rpetend they do not exist. It takes both sides, both points of view, both tendencies, to reach higher and further than before.

Men aren't generally interested in breast feeding? What exactly is keeping a field where women have no inherent advantage primarily a female dominated industry? Men can certainly lactate and breast feed. Could it be we just aren't interested in it? Could it be that there *is* an underlying inherent advantage for female breast feeding? Either or both of those can be it. Nursing likewise is still a female dominated industry. Popular wisdom claims no inherent advantage there either. Reality, however, demonstrates the opposite.

SO what if men aren't very interested in lactating, being cheerleaders, nurses, stay at home parents, or any variety of fields women are the dominant presence. So what if women aren't generally inclined to go into math, computers, or whatever they don't feel like going into. We are all different and trying to make us all the same is a grave injustice to who and what we are.

We are born equal, not identical.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[amightywind]

Yeah, imagine - she'll be growing up in a country where a woman can become head of state. I'm disgusted, for sure.

Have you failed to notice that in the decade since she was deposed Islamic radicalism has grown in Pakistan, and that the plight of women has worsened? I'm glad to cite some source for your statement, even if it is wikipedia, an idiot's answer for everything. You might have read it more closely.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Lodragandraoidh]

I speculate that the reason more men than women get involved with computer development (hardware or software) has more to do with years of social programming than with innate interests.

Girls are taught that it is more important to be a supporter (cheerleader, wife, mother); boys are taught that it is more important to be the leader (football star, captain of industry, patriarch). From childhood through adulthood these messages and variations of them are reinforced with rare exceptions.

My own observations tend to support this theory.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[TimTheFoolMan]

Thank you for correcting the correction. The person responsible for the original correction has been sacked.

As usual, I was correct, in spite of my best efforts.

Tim

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Pchelka]

The girl in the article is obviously very gifted and skilled with computers, in spite of coming from a poor country in which there are not many opportunties for women.

It just kills me to see posts doubting women's abilities on Slashdot. Likewise for posts that ask why more women don't go into computer science.
The answer to that question is right here in front of us all.

If the girl in the article really is very skilled with computers, how do you all know that she doesn't read Slashdot herself? How do you know that she isn't reading all of the comments posted on Slashdot regarding the article about her right now?

If she were to read some of the negative, sexist, and racist comments posted here she probably would feel very hurt. She might possibly even be discouraged enough to give up her dreams of having a career in computer science.

Many of us who read Slashdot, both male and female, have had someone tell us that we couldn't do something that we really wanted to do for completely stupid and irrelevant reasons at some point in our lives. I'm sure every one of us here can remember a time when we have been told that we were too short, or too tall, or too nerdy, etc. by people who didn't appreciate our abilities or care about our dreams.

If you could look her in the eye and tell her that in spite of her knowledge and accomplishments she has no future in computer science because she is a girl, you are completely lacking in compassion. I think she deserves an apology from many of the people who have posted comments here today.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[Hal_Porter]

I'm English. I'm an atheist and I don't worship any 'verses'.

The US gave aid to the mujaheddin, it's true. Aiding the mujaheddin was a reasonable thing to do, because it brought down the Soviet Union. But the fatal mistake they made was to channel it through the ISI, who gave it to people like Osama who were as anti Western as they were anti communist, because they had a hostile, Islamist agenda. Once the Taliban took over, the Pakistan was virtually the only country in the world that recognised them. Apart from the Saudis of course, who had much the same goals. And the UAE for some reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

Fighting for freedom is of course no vice, but it depends how you do it. Those Kasmiri guys don't seem to have qualms about targetting civillians do they? e.g. here or here.

And I don't believe they are fighting for their freedom - lots of these guys are fighting for an Islamic state. And up until recently, they were supported by the ISI.

Maybe you should question what your media/government/ISI tells you a bit. After all an Islamic state in Pakistan won't be much fun for you.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[CrazyTalk]

Are you actually taking the advice of a ten year old seriously? She may know something about computers but has LOT of growing up to do no matter how smart she it.

Re:Equal Opportunities

[morie]

Damn. Sorry. I'm a insensitive clod.

who would have guessed we have aliens on slashdot as well :-)

Thanx for the link, I didn't know this expression yet. Maybe I'm not such a nerd after all... That could explain the girlfriend and the marketing job.

Oh Dear God!

[utdpenguin]

Won't somebody think of hte children?????

Re:Big deal.

[oldwolf13]

I started programming at 10..

of course... a lot of it was stuff like..

10 print "k-mart sucks dick!"
20 goto 10

entered on a commodore 64 at a local k-mart store for all the passer bys to see :)

=P impressive?

[r3tex]

Does this say more about the young girl? or about Microsoft?

9 year old completes single exam on workstation OS

[Nailer]

IIRC (its been years since I've done Windows certifications), an MCP has completed a single OS exam, most likely a workstation one. I think a lot of 9 year old kids could do this.

Re:Big deal.

[dedazo]

Take a chill pill and call me in the morning.

Burn em fast, burn em hard

[bigbinc]

This chick will be so burnt out by the time she is 20, it won't even be funny. I saw the smile, what a nice smile. In 4 years, she will look like Glenn Close or Susan Sarandon.

Send her to the customers at 15, she will be crying to Mommy 2 weeks later. Then comes the drinking, the drugs, 3 or 4 divorces.

...life is good.

Re:Burn em fast, burn em hard

[bigbinc]

You know what people do at 10, they eat paint, sniff glue. Play doom for 30 hours straight.

Re:Burn em fast, burn em hard

[lisaparratt]

"Things have changed, today the question for parents is: It's 10am, do you know where your children are?"

Re:Burn em fast, burn em hard

[Petersson]

She is not an American, she is Pakistanian. RTFA, she's a muslim, that means that as soon as she has period she is considered to be a woman and her life will change brutally.

She can then be married (her family arranges this), she starts to wear headscarf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headscarf and her career burns in hell. Or for a whole lotta bucks she will become Bill Gates's wife...

Re:Burn em fast, burn em hard

[Flyboy Connor]

Or she just continues her studies and becomes an average student and average worker over time. I recently read about sociological research that pointed out that 'gifted' people are a lot less likely to become outstanding contributors to their chosen field than those that simply have to study hard for it.

Re:Burn em fast, burn em hard

[Ubergrendle]

Its easy to explain actually -- you learn more from failure than success. This is less true for sports (e.g. Tiger Woods was a prodigy at 6, and he is now too), and there will always be certifiable once-in-a-lifetime geniuses like Mozart, but on the whole brilliant scientists or businessmen are the result of hard work. Trump may be an ass, and he's lost billions, but losing billions has allowed him to learn how to make billions. Most 'good' coders throw out more code than they use; same with writers; etc.

Is the consistency of effort and the strength of will that usually ends in results... this girl will potentially get all of the MS certifications and maybe a good programming degree, but she'll never lead a fortune 500 company or invent the next internet. She's already following a path of 'learn what people tell me to learn'.

Smarts

[cicadae]

Sure the M$ certs aren't terribly difficult, but this seems to be a bright kid who is aware of some social issues. She was questioning Gates about the gender imbalance in the Microserf labor pool.

Not "prodigious"

[Arthur B.]

Kids are intelligent being, with very high learning abilities. Unfortunately the school system sucks (especially in the US). I'm not surprised that a kid can catch quickly on programming languages. They share many characteristics with natural languages, such as recursivity (talking about the syntax, not recursion as a programming technic), this is a great age to learn these things. She had the chance to have a great education. Education is extremly beneficial to economy but on a long term and thus is generally not a big concern for poilitics.

Re:Not "prodigious"

[Xiaran]

Yep. When I was 10/11 I learnt z80 asm on a homebrew machine that me and my dad made(actually I broke it more cause I was a crap solderer :) I got better). Then learned basic using MBASIC and CBASIC under CPM. Then got Turbo Pascal 3.0 and learnt that. Started coding in Hendrixs Small C compiler at about 12/13 ish I think. Learnt 6502 asm on an apple 2 at school. Soes this make me a genius? I wish. (gasp... just realised Ive been coding in C for approx 20 years. I suddenly feel old... youd think Id stop with the accidentally dropping breaks from switch statments by now).

Right Place, Right Time

[Moth7]

So a kid took the exam and passed. Did every kid in the world get a chance to take the exam? No. For every one of these stories there must be a hundred kids who think "I could have done that, why didn't I get the chance?". Maybe I could have taken my exams a couple of years early. Maybe you could have handled that big project better than the guy they gave it to. The fact is, these situations owe more to circumstance - if we were all given these opportunities, stories like this would be a two a penny.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[westlake]

For every one of these stories there must be a hundred kids who think "I could have done that, why didn't I get the chance?" or, just maybe, this girl doesn't believe in maybe, should of, could of.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[Council]

It is a given that for every brilliant person in the world, there is another with the same capabilities who never had the same opportunities. Every Beethoven, Euler, or olympic sprinter had potential or technical equals, they just didn't end up in the right position for us to hear about them. That doesn't stop us from celebrating the ones who do it. The biggest lesson we can take away from this is that we should encourage these kids. Not say "sure, you did it, but other people could have, too."

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[backslashdot]

Well, I wonder if for every Einstein there are people who think "I could have done that, why didn't I get the chance?". And most of them would be wrong.

What's the matter with you? Feeling old, got passed over for something at work?

Einstein could have passed this exam at 3 had he been given the chance ... but so what? Had I been trained in baseball since I was 3, I too could have been like Sammy fucking Sosa.

Sorry to inform you that this was a nice and encouraging achievement for this girl in Pakistan where many females are shunned, ridiculed, and persecuted for trying to learn to read.

You sound pretty bitter and cynical dude.

So get some effing damn therapy instead of trying to spread negativity around.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[kylo9]

For every one of these stories there must be a hundred kids who think "I could have done that, why didn't I get the chance?"

I think that a lot of kids might have read the story and thought "hey, she did, so could I". Unless, of cource, they're depressed and unsure of their own worth. But you can't blame Bill or the story for that.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[cranos]

I would just like to point out that it does not take an Einstein to pass a microsoft exam, kudos to the girl for passing the exam at such a young age and in a country that still allows honour killings, howeverit would have been more impressive if she had snagged a Cisco cert or one of the Unixes.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[jgerman]

You must be joking. Beethoven? This is the coding equivalent of a kid playing chopsticks. Maybe something slightly more complicated. It's only something to be celebrated by those who are mystified by coding in general.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[Council]

I understand that; I was responding to the OP's talk of how accomplishments aren't as noteworthy in general if there are other people who've done it. I mean, this is the youngest person to get an MSCE so far, right? That's something interesting. I was just saying "yeah, she's the youngest, but someone else could have been the youngest instead!" doesn't necessarially mean it's completely meaningless.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[ziggyboy]

howeverit would have been more impressive if she had snagged a Cisco cert or one of the Unixes.

Oh and even more impressive if she passed my nuclear physics final exam. There are thousands (millions?) of other exams that would have been more impressive for a 9-year-old to pass. What's your point? This is impressive enough. How the hell do you get a 3rd grader to study sorting algorithms?!

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[CrazyTalk]

yes, but the point is - you didn't, and she did. That's why it's news.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[TofuTheGreat]

"if we were all given these opportunities"?
Are you daft? You have just as much opportunity to take these exams as anyone else (save probably 3rd world countries that use spears instead of CPUs).
Just walk your lazy butt to the nearest testing center, pay your fee, go to the testing room and do it. There's no need for the "opportunity" to be given to you.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[lotsToLearn]

I happen to know three other girls from Karachi, Pakistan who acheived a similar feat but this time passing Sun's Java Certifications. In fact they were all sisters and the younger sisters broke the record of elder ones recursively - in each subsequent exam. I believe it is an acheivement to sit the exam no matter how meaningless the exam itself is.

The eldest sister (around 15 i think) is now an instructor at one of the largest IT institute chains and has 4 * her_age students.

Re:Right Place, Right Time

[Rick and Roll]

I agree. And a good opportunity, more often than not, helps people become smarter. I know I would be smarter now if I went to MIT rather than a state school. I don't try to pretend there's no big difference.

The mind-opening exercise has helped me to get my thinking in the right place, and now I am watching MIT OpenCourseware videos, and learning a lot.

Going to a great school or being mentored properly is not so much a reward as an opportunity.

From the article

[wormuniverse]

"The type of thinking that goes into correctly answering those questions is pretty mature. ... Microsoft certifications are not a joke -- they're highly respected in the industry." ... seriously, i can't figure out what industry they are talking about.

Re:From the article

[Couldn'tCareLess]

The Microsoft Certification industry... duh ;)

Re:From the article

[fishfinger]

The industry where clueless managers steer the boat!

Re:From the article

[Linker3000]

..the training industry 'cos they make buckets of cash from them.

Re:Big deal.

[webmind]

Anyway, assuming the husband that her family picks out for her to marry in exchange for a goat lets her work, she'll just be taking your job over for a measly $5,000/yr, so suck on that. And we won't even bother considering the chances that she'll end up glowing next time her country gets in a nuke tiff with India again.

no.. we're not stereotyping at all here...

Re:Get them young huh?

[Richard Dick Head]

Not quite, but you can bet that elementary school teachers are going to parade this article around to their students. They have now found their poster-child 10 year old girl who actually gives a shit about technology.

Its all about the big push from the top to get us some damn chicks in these tech schools of ours. :)

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[Jarnis]

Actually MCP = just about any MS exam.

Even something as simple as using Office.

"certificates"

[YuriGherkin]

What a coincidence. I spent the day interviewing people for a sysadmin job at my work. We had this one guy (with terrible body odour) who had loads of "certificates" ... but he could barely answer any of our questions except by re-phrasing them and saying them back to us. He didn't get hired - but he had so many certificates from "training colleges"

No-one hires someone just because they can obtain a certificate. I bet you could train a monkey to get a Micr0$oft Cert1ficat3 - but you still wouldn't hire them or give them a position of authority and responsibility.

The fact that a 10yr old child can obtain a Microsoft Certificate means that it's no indication of total worth as a software developer or employee.

Re:"certificates"

[B5_geek]

..."No-one hires someone just because they can obtain a certificate."...

That's how I got hired, and that is how I get raises.

I got my foot in the door by having a bunch of certs. That got the interview. I just found out that the _only_ thing keeping me from getting bumped up the $ ladder is to upgrade my exams.

Skill? nah knowledge? no Charisma? Hell no. A bunch of stupid letters after my name? yeah.
That is how I am rewarded.

Re:"certificates"

[YuriGherkin]

My point was that this guy looked *great* on paper but was completely crap at the interview. By the way, he showed us his "certificates" and his average scores were barely above the pass mark ... it even mentioned which questions he got wrong. e.g. "What is the difference between RJ11 and RJ45?" !

Yeah, you can have certificates and letters after your name, but if you aren't any good at the practical side then you will get found out very quickly and lose your job - if you even get past the interview stage.

Are you in a big company? That would make sense if they only promote based on paper credentials rather than personal achievement. Consider yourself fortunate then.

Re:"certificates"

[B5_geek]

Yes I am lucky, and I know what you mean about 'paper-mcse' type people. (I have helped interview them for our company.) I usually give them an easy test to prove what they know or don't know.

it's a fun test.
1) What is the IP address of www.HP.com? (Ethernet cable was unplugged)

2) Install this printer driver. (lpt1 disabled in BIOS) ...etc...

In total there were 10 questions. I've had a few that I just told to give-up after 2 hours and only getting a couple of answers.

I've never thought of the company (only promoting based on Certs.) as being lucky, but I guess you are right. I hate programming, so that leaves me with Company XYZ Certified Eng. style certs for me to go after.

Re:"certificates"

[jen0r]

"The fact that a 10yr old child can obtain a Microsoft Certificate means that it's no indication of total worth as a software developer or employee."

Does anyone else think that this could be a huge backlash on Microsoft Corp. because it is possible for a 9-year old to pass? I would think that after this "incident" that they would have to seriously consider raising their testing standards. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is wonderful that a 9-year old girl was able to pass a test at such a young age (especially being from Pakistan)- but I would have to say that it highlights that just about anyone can pass these tests as long as you cram hard enough. It would be really interesting to see what she is able to do if asked to impromptu... if anything at all!

Re:"certificates"

[sydneyfong]

> 1) What is the IP address of www.HP.com? (Ethernet cable was unplugged)
> 2) Install this printer driver. (lpt1 disabled in BIOS) ...etc...

The competent programmer/developer/sysadmin/etc doesn't waste their brain cycles/memory on things like that.

I for one wouldn't want to work for a company with these kinds of interview questions. I mean, the things that you mention are really things that are do-able with "with a very small
shell script". A competent company would have better things to do than to work on memorizing the IP address of www.whatever.com.

As a side note, I don't see how people could linger on these kinds of questions for two hours... I'd have left within half an hour or so maximum if I had no idea about the answers.

Re:"certificates"

[B5_geek]

You miss-understand a few things.

It wasn't a programmer/developer/sysadmin/etc position, it was for the equivilent of a tech support role, so yes they were relevent.

The point behind asking the Ip address wasn't to see if he knew it, easy way to find an IP: ping it!

If the ping didn't work, find out why. (ethernet not plugged in!)

The position required _basic_ tech support skills, I didn't feel that I asked for info outside what he would need to know in the field.
And yes, i was surprised he didn't just quit either.

Re:Get them young huh?

[gbulmash]

Okay, when will MS start getting their certification in while kids are in pre-school?

But what good is a certification in Logo? I guess coding for Windows beats making shoes for Nike.

Maybe they're getting them this young so someone's ready to work on the Y3K problem?

So sad

[mischalla]

During a recent meeting with Bill Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story.

Whats next? The ode to the blue screen? Did Bill give her his compu-papal blessing?

Re:Big deal.

[lw54]

What a worthless comment.

The article was an insightful look at life through the eyes of a very brave young woman growing up in a society that does not offer many opportunities for women.

Having written a calculator and a sorting program in C# along with earning her MCAD, I consider Arfa a computer programmer by any definition.

Arfa has demonstrated considerable creativity, imagination, hard work and considerable drive. I'll gladly give up your job for her to find good work =p

Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[Nexu]

From this article ( http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040216/asp/bengal/s tory_2900904.asp ) on Feb 16 2004 report that an 8 year old boy is the youngest. I'm not a math wiz. But last time i checked on elementairy school. 10 > 8. What's going on here?

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[Dimensio]

Someone who learned math in a US public school wrote the article.

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[Anonymous Coward]

>What's going on here?

Calc.exe ?

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[arivanov]

India vs Pakistan. If the boy got certified in India it was not reflected by the Pakistan media and as far as they are concerned it never existed or was fraudulent. Same for vice versa. I sometimes really wonder how did these two avoid managing to nuke each other.

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[Vo0k]

Well, he WAS 8 on Feb 16 2004. Now, in Jul 15 2005 he is certainly at least 9, possibly 10, which may (though doesn't have to) mean the girl in question is -currently- the youngest.

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[troon]

You didn't read the NVIDIA story then?

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[learn fast]

What's going on here?

Public relations.

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[wolf-]

Boy is MCSE.
Girl is MCAD.

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[Got Laid, Can't Code]

Thank you! (Why is everyone else missing this?)

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[Ranger]

In some Asian countries it is common to be considererd one year old when you are born. So she could be younger. It's like buildings in Europe; their first floor is our second floor in America.

What we really need is the exact time of conception and we can measure in seconds from the time of conception how old both of them are.

Officer: "What were you doing on the night of..."

Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now?

[glesga_kiss]

I sometimes really wonder how did these two avoid managing to nuke each other.

The fallout will still screw up the victor due to the wind. That's the ONLY reason. Likewise, it's the only reason Israel hasn't used theirs either.

Nukes are for far-off enemies...or a "deterent". Seems the neo-cons only invade countries without WMD, anything else might be risky; might turn into a fair fight!! :-)

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[Anonymous Conrad]

an MCP has completed a single OS exam, most likely a workstation one. I think a lot of 9 year old kids could do this.

RTFA not the summary. She has MCAD, that's APPLICATION DEVELOPER.

MCAD, read the article

[lw54]

Everyone seems to be missing the fact that she earned her MCAD, not some silly test on Microsoft Word.

MCAD Requirements and Training Resources

_presented_ him with a poem, didn't write it.

[DingerX]

I think she just handed him a copy of Howl. It's not her fault that the press makes her look like the author.

don't be so negative

[belmolis]

From the point of view of adult programmers an MCAD may not count for a lot, and Microsoft may be a nasty company, but this is still an impressive little girl with an interesting story. There aren't a lot of nine year olds who can write C#. That's a good bit harder than some baby Basic, if for no other reason than the detail that you have to take care of and the object-orientation. And not very many nine year olds have the interest and dedication to pursue something like this.

Its also important to realize that this is a little girl in a country that gives very few opportunities to women, especially women who are not from the upper class. According to the article, her dad is a soldier. It doesn't sound like she comes from a wealthy, powerful family. So, while getting this certificate may well not make her a genius, it does make her a smart and persistent little girl who has done something quite unusual not only for her age but, in her country, for her gender. I say good for her, good for her family for encouraging her rather than telling her not to act unladylike, and good for Microsoft for giving her the trip. (But if I were in charge at Microsoft, I would have thrown in a stop at Disneyland.)

Re:don't be so negative

[GReaToaK_2000]

Wish I had mode points to give you (positive ones). I am glad to see someone post with an intelligent point.

Re:don't be so negative

[tgd]

Back in my day, us kids had to write in assembly, and we didn't have these fancy registers you young whipper-snappers have today! We just had an accumulator and sixteen K of memory!

Kids these days! You've all got it so easy!

And get off my lawn!
</grumpy_old_man>

Re:don't be so negative

[Sleepy]

I am 35 years old, but that's almost how I remember things.

I did not get my first computer until 1984 -- an Atari 1200XL with 64K and cassette drive. BASIC got boring quickly, and the only way to do anything interesting -- like graphical display list interrupts -- was to use Assembly. Assembly was pretty easy on a 6502.

In the pre-IBM PC clone days, you could get a REALLY nice computer for a few hundred dollars. Then for some reason everything went to the PC, and for over a decade computers cost way more than it should. It's funny how manufacturers are shooting for a $199 price point -- what many paid in the early 80's.

It'll be nice to see computers hit $50.

Re:don't be so negative

[cr0sh]

It's funny how manufacturers are shooting for a $199 price point -- what many paid in the early 80's.

I think your recollections of the past are being colored by the present, or something...

First off, while there were home computers in the early 1980's which cost under $200.00 (VIC-20 and Timex Sinclair being really the only two in the USA), they rarely came with storage devices or a monitor. If you were lucky, you had a spare TV to hook them up to and an old cassette player. Most people had to fork out for the cassette player, and if you could get a disk drive, watch out! One cost as much or more than the computer you were buying it for, and floppies were $20.00 or more per pack of 10...

Furthermore, $200.00 was a lot of money back then - probably more comparable to $500.00 today (heck, IIRC, gasoline was still under a dollar a gallon).

Most cheaper home computers of the time which were better (as in cpu, memory, and upgradability) than the aforementioned two systems, such as a C=64 or TRS-80 Color Computer, cost between $200.00 to $400.00 - for about $500.00 total, you could get the computer and a floppy drive together. Printers cost a whole heck of a lot, and modems weren't cheap either...

Still, what you have to remember is that these home computers, in the mid-1980s, while cheap - were more than just "low-end" - they were "last generation" 8-bit machines, running at 1-2 MHz. For business (well, the businesses that could afford them), 16-bit machines running between 4-10 MHz, with 512K to 1MB RAM were where it was at (interestingly, the TRS-80 Color Computer 3 debuted at this stage too - with a 68B09E hybrid 8/16 bit processor - it was mainly 8 bit on the outside, but internally had some 16 bit features and instructions - and it came with 128K of memory - a true home computer stepping stone between 8 and 16 bit generations). These machines, however, cost between $1500-$3000.00 - 1985 dollars, that is. Most came with floppy drives, some came with hard drives (5-20 MB - woohoo!) as an accessory, monitors were still extra (an extra you HAD to buy - no plugging into the TV for you!).

The early to mid-1980's was a transition time, from 8-bit to 16 bit machines - where you had in the home market many funky 8 bit machines, some hybrids, and one or two true 16 bit home computers (that cost a fortune, like an Amiga 500 or a Mac). It was a time of 8086, 8088, 80186 (the few that were made), and 80286 machines (for the wealthy and businesses).

I would say that we are in such a transition phase right now - moving from 32 bit to 64 bit (also, moving from single to multiple core CPUs). Which is probably why the prices are dropping so low on so many things - 32 bit is becoming "last generation" (while Alpha users chuckle to themselves). In all honesty, things are the same today as they were then, if you adjust for inflation, and really look at what was happenning then and compare it to what is happenning now. It is tempting to think that the prices back then were cheap, but they honestly weren't, once you compare everything...

Re:don't be so negative

[Reservoir Penguin]

The girls family is probaly pretty well off thanks to their father. There is huge competetion to get on the UN peacekeepinjg force as the pay starts at about 1K$ a month which is a small fortune in Pakistan

Re:don't be so negative

[Shadowlore]

There aren't a lot of nine year olds who can write C#.

My six year old girl can program in Python, and is learning how to work the Linux command line (she is already fluent in X-Windows/Fluxbox/Gnome). So can several young children I am aware of. At her current rate she'll be ready for RHCT/RHCE in a couple years if she still wants to. ;)

Remember, Farragut was commanding a naval vessel at the age of 12, and had a solid understanding of caclulus and advanced geometry, not to mention navigation on the open seas by that age. The only reason children of today don't do such things is because society/government won't let them.

Around here, we don't restrict their learning resulting in children single-digit-age who do/know/understand more than most graduates.

What we need is more of these stories in order to have a chance at breaking the molds we've been shackled with.

Re:Get them young huh?

[Petersson]

This is not just a kid...

This is the Microsoft Youngling!

Let us to our dreams

[fict0n]

Before reading the article, did anyone else envision an orphaned tom-boy living with her homeless uncle holding a wrench with a knack for robotics in post-apocalyptic Seattle? Well, I didn't.. That girl is really bright I have a feeling she's going places!

Re:Big deal.

[afra242]

Also, could this kid kiss Bill's ass just a little more? Wrote a poem celebrating his life's history? Are you fucking yanking my dick here? And they seem to gloss by her being a "computer programmer". What, because she made a little clicky-thingy in LOGO?

Might not be a big deal to you, however, for a girl that young in a third world country, such as Pakistan, it certainly is. She was bought over to the US (first time her father and her left Pakistan) and everything was probably paid for. So she was showing her appreciation. It isn't everyday a young child from Pakistan gets to come to the U.S., and especially on a trip paid for by the world's richest man.

However, if she is eager to start hacking away, and Microsoft won't hire her now, she should be encouraged to contribute to the Open Source community - even on a Windows project. That way, she will learn not only how to code more, but also learn how to interact with developers across the globe. That, at that very young age, will surely look extremely impressive and will teach her infinite things.

Reminds me of a quote....

[ceeam]

MCSE is to computers as McDonalds Certified Chef is to fine cuisine.

Re:Reminds me of a quote....

[generalpf]

Great quote, but irrelevant. She earned an MCAD, not an MCSE. Much different, and much more difficult. (I know, I earned an MCSD. Twice.)

Please RTFA.

I think she is smart...

[voss]

She passes a microsoft exam grown adults have failed and she manages to kiss up to a billionaire at age 9.

Heres a photo of her.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/photos/photo.asp?Pho toID=69691

and heres an article

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/232514_msft arfa14.html

Before you call her a kissass realize she actually
asked intelligent questions such as why there werent more women at microsoft(before the snarky comments remember she is a 9 year old girl speaking up for equality in a nation like Pakistan) and told a Microsoft VP her vision for self-navigating car.

You have to realize for a little geek girl in a country like Pakistan going to Microsoft is like
going to a paradise where everything works and people are smart just like her.

If you check out her photo, in another 10-15
years she is going to be a major geek hottie...
so be nice and not be pricks!

This is just a reminder to all us geeks who love to bash people from that part of the world...

Pakistan and india are the only two countries that I know of where many of the geeks are women who are good looking and its considered a good thing to be living with your parents as an adult until you are married...think about it!

Re:I think she is smart...

[Civil Beast]

If you check out her photo, in another 10-15 years she is going to be a major geek hottie...

... Now where is that (-1) Disturbing - Moderation when you need it?

Re:I think she is smart...

[Pastis]

With regard to hot programmers, check Norway :)

Re:I think she is smart...

[voss]

Get your mind out of the gutter.

In 10 or 15 years she'll be a beautiful twentysomething woman who will probably
be a programmer or YOUR project manager. :P

Re:I think she is smart...

[DNS-and-BIND]

A "hottie"? I think not. She will have an arranged marriage in her teens. It is doubtful that her husband would allow her outside the home to work for Microsoft, in the company of so many single men. If she sleeps around or is unfaithful, she'll be dipped in acid or simply killed. Such is Pakistan.

Re:I think she is smart...

[revery]

no way. I saw Bride and Prejudice, the women are all independent and they dance and have attitude. Do the stick dance. They are funny and colorful. Ha ha ha. Come to India, come to Pakistan. Do the cobra Dance. Ha ha ha.

Re:I think she is smart...

[lotsToLearn]

That movie does not reflect the true India, specially that in villages. Well many things are close (e.g the stick dance, parties, fun-gama) but they arent as liberal - at least in the villages tho. But they are fun. Watch kamasutra... :P

Re:I think she is smart...

[kirk26]

I'll convert to her religeon and marry her when she turns 18.

Re:I think she is smart...

[revery]

That movie does not reflect the true India, specially that in villages. Well many things are close (e.g the stick dance, parties, fun-gama) but they arent as liberal - at least in the villages tho. But they are fun

I figured as much. As with all generalizations, and even more so with cinematic generalizations, the devil is in the details. No one can make a two hour movie, much less a comedy, and capture the Truth.

Watch kamasutra

I'm waiting for the book to come out.

--

in the end, it is only Light that is sufficent
Jesus is that light?

Re:I think she is smart...

[glesga_kiss]

If she sleeps around or is unfaithful, she'll be dipped in acid or simply killed. Such is Pakistan.

You've seen some of the shit that the people on Jerry Springer do to their spouces, right? Someone here got an acid attach a few years ago. Hell, does the name Bobbit mean anything to you? They both are celebrities now!!

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Leave the nation bashing to the countries that actually are decent and friendly. There must be at least one of them out there.... Remember, you are likely coming from a nation that had separate toilets for the "black folks" in living memory, don't get us started here, we could rip you apart!! ;-)

Re:I think she is smart...

[AvantLegion]

If you check out her photo, in another 10-15 years she is going to be a major geek hottie... so be nice and not be pricks!

What's this "in 10-15 years" stuff?

Hooray, creepy young girl lust!

Re:I think she is smart...

[tzuriel]

Clearly, she is smart.

Afterward, Arfa described Gates as an "ideal personality," explaining that he had been second only to Disneyland on her list of things she wanted to see in the United States.

She's got her priorities straight. See the large mouse first and then the little rat.

Re:I think she is smart...

[lhoriman]

Pakistan and india are the only two countries that I know of where...its considered a good thing to be living with your parents as an adult until you are married

You had me up until this statement.

Slashdotters take note: Living with your parents as an adult is just as pathetic for women as it is for men.

--
Jeff Schnitzer
Think you're unique?

Re:I think she is smart...

[identity0]

Come on, haven't you ever seen a ultrasound and thought, "in 19, 20 years she's gonna be a major geek hottie"?

It must be just a geek impulse - whenever we see a female on a CRT monitor, we've conditioned ourselves to thinking she's hot :P

Re:I think she is smart...

[RoadWarriorX]

Oh, yeah?

My ten year old think she's HOT!

Re:I think she is smart...

[0111 1110]

If you check out her photo, in another 10-15
years she is going to be a major geek hottie...

I think you have that backwards. She's cute now, but in 10-15 years things may go south. My gut feeling says that she will probably lose a lot of that cuteness by the age of 20. She also may lose her interest in computers when she figures out that she is actually kind of pretty.

I never had any doubt...

[ratta]

about microsoft certifications :)

Arfa's vision of the future of transport

[ettlz]

From TFA:

Later in the afternoon, she sat outside with S. "Soma" Somasegar, a Microsoft corporate vice president, and described her vision for a self-navigating car.

Whoa, missy! Prior art! Everyone around here knows the Russians got there first!

Re:wrong

[TrappedByMyself]

Now having said that, the MCP that this article refers to is a big joke.

From the article The certification she received was as a Microsoft Certified Application Developer.
That's 3 development exams
An experienced developer would need to study for these.

He's an MSCE, not an MCP

[rv8]

If you read the article on the Indian boy, he is supposedly an MCSE, while the Pakistani girl is supposedly an MCP. So, she may very well be the youngest MCP.

An 8 yr old MCSE - either he is one bright kid, or MCSE isn't soo tough, or everything you read on the internet isn't true. Pick one.

Re:He's an MSCE, not an MCP

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article on the Indian boy, he is supposedly an MCSE, while the Pakistani girl is supposedly an MCP. So, she may very well be the youngest MCP.

Uh, no. If he's an MCSE he's also an MCP.

MCP = any one exam - well, virtually any.
MCSE = many exams on Windows administration.

Now this girl actually has MCAD:

MCAD = many exams on Windows development, but not the architecture exam.

An 8 yr old MCSE - either he is one bright kid, or MCSE isn't soo tough, or everything you read on the internet isn't true. Pick one.

If he's been setting up windows since he was four or five, fair enough.

Bill Sidious!

[Joel Rowbottom]

"Rise, my young apprentice..."

(eek).

are you sure you read the article?

[clymere]

i was skeptical as well..MCSE's are not particularly well regarded. However, the MCP exam she passed seems much more in depth than just getting certified in excel: "She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language. The certification she received was as a Microsoft Certified Application Developer. She says she plans to pursue a more advanced certification, as a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, which involves building programs into a broader system for a business." Thats C#, not VB! I'm not an MS expert, but I say thats pretty damn good for a nine year old!

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[ray-auch]

Thats C#, not VB! I'm not an MS expert, but I say thats pretty damn good for a nine year old!


By my recollection, back in the 80s there were 11/12yr olds (probably some 9yr olds too but not that I knew and computers weren't anywhee near as common) writing games in assembler, and on hardware that you could actually fry by doing the wrong thing in software.

These days many children grow up with access to pcs from 1 or 2. My 3yr old has been known to help his nursery teachers with windows when they stuck.

A 9yr old knowing C# is really not suprising.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[thelost]

Certainly there is an element of truth in that, however a kid then getting professional certification is still little heard of, whatever the value of that certification might be. Comparably we have kids now sitting their gcse's or a levels (I'm british) at extremely young ages, perhaps kids are just getting smarter.. or have a more information and learning available to them more easily. I can hear the crow of a thousand 'grumpy old men' mumbling "In my day..." but I think that this 9year old and any other prodigious kids achievements are certainly worthy of some recognition.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[dogfull]

Damm kids have it easy these days.

When I was young, we'd write in QBASIC, of all things. We didn't have luxuries like structured programming and garbage collecting.

Maybe we did have garbage collecting. But still!

I'd reckon writing a C# non-trivial application is a damm lot easier than writing something comparable in QBASIC. Still, at nine years old, she definitly is promissing.

(Please, /., spare me your obligatory tapedrive/pottery comments, and don't even begin about obscure IBM languages)

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[tomocoo]

I thought C# and VB.net were the same language with different syntax...

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[minus_273]

have you looked at vb.net and C#. While i know only c#, take a look at this example:
VB
Dim tip As Double = billTotal * tipRate
Console.WriteLine()
Console.WriteLine("Bill total:" + ControlChars.Tab + "{0,8:c}", billTotal)

C#
double tip = billTotal * tipRate;
Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine("Bill total:\t{0,8:c}", billTotal);

simple example, but you get the point.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[JohnFluxx]

Agreed. I was paying for myself to go to college to do programming in C and C++ at 10, and I found that too easy. I had advanced city & guilds in both C and C++ by 14.
Later than this girl, but I could have done it a lot earlier imho.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[ray-auch]

Kids getting A levels isn't new either. As far as I know Ruth Lawrence's record from the 80s still stands.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[dusik]

>> A 9yr old knowing C# is really not suprising.

Moreover, with computers being so prevalent, what I have trouble understanding is WHY IT'S SO DAMN RARE?

All kids want to do is play games, and adults don't generally encourage them to look behind the scenes and figure out how it all really works.

When I was 9 I was happily coding away, but none of my friends were... oh wait... I had no friends back then ;)

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[charlieo88]

Thats C#, not VB!

Stop the hate!

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[bhtooefr]

There's a few factors...

First, programming isn't friendly on the cheap Dell special. Boot it up, and see if you get thrown into the BASIC interpreter. Didn't think so. Granted, there are VBScript and JavaScript interpreters there, but they're not mentioned in the documentation for the PC. Back in the day, the manuals for computers talked about BASIC, and gave a crash course on programming in it.

Second, programming is no longer cool. I mean, 20 years ago, one could do this:

5 FLASH
10 PRINT "I AM TEH GREATEST!"
20 PRINT CHR$(7)
30 GOTO 10

and be the coolest kid around. (yes, I threw a beep in for good measure.) Now, you have to make something REALLY cool (like a 3D game, or a robot (yes, I've impressed all of my friends by replacing a girl who wouldn't go to the prom with me with a Python program. Including that girl. And, yes, I'm a pathetic excuse for a human being ;-)))

The only upside? Programming is getting more interesting, because of how important computers are.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[dusik]

Well, yes, the Internet completely changed my situation :)

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[Cracell]

actually no....I was doing some programming in dos when I was 9 and that was actually hard..current day programming is a piece of cake for stuff like calculators I don't know how many slashdotters actually have contact with people at age 9 but it's not very young...now if you show me a 3 year old that could pass the test then I'd be impressed... btw this kid isn't going to be a programmer she will be sick of it by age 13 and go on to be a farmer in rural utah...

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[sgt_doom]

EXCUUUUUSE MEEEE!!!

When I was 9 I was building the computer, then programming it in assembler and Fortran. What's the big deal - that she's yet another Pakistani Muslim replacement worker - or that she's below the minimum age - which normally doesn't stop MS from hiring.....

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[ninjagin]

In the early 80s, my friends and I (in our early teens) were cracking the copyright protection on apple games with hex editors and hacking the Z80 assembly of our fave TRaSh-80 games to do and show things amusing to schoolboys like ourselves. We all had apple][ machines or kaypro/osborne/compaq CP/M luggables or TRaSh-80s at home.

So, I'd agree that being exposed to computers at an early age makes the uptake of knowledge very speedy. I'd also add that learning the rudiments of assembly language is a tough thing for just about anyone. You need to apply yourself to it. As a kid, though, it's more of a fun challenging puzzle to figure out than a task to be mastered. We looked at assembly as what our BASIC programs were doing behing the scenes, and that made it terribly interesting and fun to play with. It was also something our parents could not understand, which made it cool, too. C++, had I been exposed to it, would have been a really neat thing to play with.

I'd say the girl's well on her way to a fine career if she decides to stick with it for ten years or so. Her accomplishments are commendable. I'm sure her parents are very proud, and they should be, but it seems like natural aptitude to me.

One thing that isn't often pointed out is that there are child prodigies in only a subset of subjects. There's math, music, and now (clearly) programming. You could probably also make an argument for art. You do not, however, see child prodigies in literature, sociology, chemistry, biology, psychology, medicine, architecture, philosophy, and a host of others. I don't say this to minimize her accomplishments, but it may come as quite a surprise to her later on that she's not going to be super-wunderkind at everything she does. Apart from a couple subjects, she's going to be just like all the other kids. I hope she doesn't dumb-down to fit in with the crowd after awhile.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[Hosiah]

Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language.....Thats C#, not VB! I'm not an MS expert, but I say thats pretty damn good for a nine year old!

You're, uh, welcome to be impressed if you want. My daughter's eight, and she programs a little in Python. When I was eight, I was programming a little in Assembler and BASIC. Calc apps and bubble sorts are ten-liners. I've seen C programs do it in one. This is very good performance, but not exceptional.

Over here, we call those "script kiddies". They're the ones attacking your tiny leaf site with a laughably weak attack in the hopes of digitally spray-painting "|{-R4d |-|aQ3r5 5Tr1|{ 4g41N !!!" all over your web page. But as I said, the sad thing is that America is knowledge-deprived enough now that this little girl could easily own most of us, and we'd be glad to hand over the control to her.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[CrazyTalk]

Umm - in case you havent noticed, C# and VB are now almost exactly the same thing.

Re:are you sure you read the article?

[CrazyTalk]

You mean like APL? Thats the first programming language I learned - and the only required computer course in my engineering program in college. Of course this was way back when. When I was 9 years old, personal computers of any sort were a long ways away. Heck, we didn't even have pocket calculators then! I do marvel at kids these days growing up with computers and wonder what that would have been like. Not that different, I supposed, from our grandparents or great grandparents wondering what it would have been like growing up with TV and automobiles.

from TFA

[Saib0t]

Arfa's accomplishment is "very impressive," said Michael Earls, 33, a software consultant and Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in Atlanta. "The type of thinking that goes into correctly answering those questions is pretty mature. ... Microsoft certifications are not a joke -- they're highly respected in the industry."

Only one thing to say... LOL

Impressive girl nonetheless, but what a big "HAHA" this quote was...

Good PR.

[bronney]

Just good PR.

That's nothing..

[Linker3000]

I gave my four year old son my old Laptop (a working but battered Acer PIII-600 running XP), which he uses to play fun and learning games and visit Web sites such as Cbeebies etc.

He's five now but a few months ago he proudly told me he'd changed his desktop image to match that of my desktop. Spooky!

Oh, just to redeem him - he saw me using a ssh connection to do some admin on one of our Linux servers and was interested in the non-gui-ness of it and the fact that you had to type in commands, so I showed him a few. Now his favourite 'trick' when he sees me logged in is to do a 'df -h' or 'top' for me!

What do you think - RHCE at five??!!

Re:That's nothing..

[fingerfly]

Kids are good at learning new stuff.

Re:That's nothing..

[imsabbel]

Well, children are no idiots...
It doesnt matter that a 100 million transitors are working in a decive... if a kid can play an instrument, it can also use a computer... same stuff: remembering key presses to make stuff happen.

My niece had her seconds birthday a months a go, and if my brother in low isnt at home and she wants to hear his voice, she runs to the telephone answering machine and plays his recording (and its not as if she smashes around until sounds starts, she knows to right button to press)

1) Isn't this good? 2) It's not about the kid.

[mrRay720]

I love how the automatic assumption is that this is a bad thing. Surely it's GOOD that a 9 year old can manage it, highlighting the ease of Windows management? Isn't the question to ask is what can be done with other systems as easy to grasp?

A more serious point though is that you can train a kid to do anything like that. I'd be willing to bet that this is less a reflection of MS and the kid, and more of the parents raping their child of her youth. Give me someone from birth and I bet I could make them a Solaris guru by the time they were 10.

Anyway, I blamed parents and promoted Windows' ease of use - I expect to be thouroughly berated and modded down for being a troll. yay.

Re:1) Isn't this good? 2) It's not about the kid.

[Vo0k]

Surely it's not bad that the kid got the cert. That just shows the level of the certificate - and its worth. If you hire a guy who claims to be a computer professional and supports this claim with such a certificate, you can bet he's a liar and a moron, because even 9yo kid can learn all that - and that's certainly NOT enough to pass as "pro".

Re:1) Isn't this good? 2) It's not about the kid.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your false arguement was true, surely EVERY 9yo would have one?

Surely the most logical answer is that there is something exceptional in these circumstances (kid or parents) rather than something with the certification? To falsely claim otherwise does nothing but show you up for fanboi tendancies.

There's a 13yo somewhere with a masters degree - therefore everyone with a masters degree is a braindead moron.

Your logic is severely flawed by your bias.

Re:1) Isn't this good? 2) It's not about the kid.

[leifbk]

A more serious point though is that you can train a kid to do anything like that.

I don't think you can train a kid to do anything remotely like this unless she has a genuine innate knack for it. This is certainly a gifted kid.

From the article:

It began at age 5, when she walked by a computer lab at her school and started wondering about those strange "boxes," the computers and monitors. Later, when she found out what they did, she was amazed.

"When you push a button, something magically appears on the box," she said, recalling the experience.

She eventually persuaded her father to buy a computer, and she demonstrated unexpected aptitude, using Microsoft PowerPoint and other programs.

[...]

"I saw her doing something extraordinary, making presentations," said her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa and came with his daughter to Microsoft this week. "That made me think that she could use some professional coaching, and she could do better in her future life."

Karim said he is careful not to push his daughter, but wanted to make sure that the opportunities existed for her to pursue her interest.

In my opinion, her father seems very considerate. Probably around 90% of the world's children have good reasons to envy her of such a father. How you can construe this as "raping a child of her youth" is totally beyond me.

Re:1) Isn't this good? 2) It's not about the kid.

[An Onerous Coward]

Consider this: Kids her age in neighboring Afghanistan are disarming landmines by that age.

Getting certifications, disarming unexploded ordinance... what's wrong with American kids? I can't recall meeting a ten year old with any practical skills whatsoever.

That's it, I'm adopting an Afghani kid.

So ....

[guruevi]

I installed my first Novell DOS on my 8th, OS/2 on my 10th. My nephew of 10 just installed his own Gentoo installation. MCP is really crap. We have MCP's here at my work and they are all in Sales. They do know shit about computers, how they work or Windows or Linux in common.

She wrote a poem about BillG?

[QuantumG]

Shit, that must have been hard, I mean, how many words rhyme with "bastard"?

Re:She wrote a poem about BillG?

[k4_pacific]

plastered, rastered, mustard, custard, flustered.

Anyways, as Ray Charles once said, "Breaks my heart to see a kid that young gone bad..."

Re:She wrote a poem about BillG?

[CapnGrunge]

Hastur!

Re:wrong

[Jarnis]

Whoops. make that 'the summary referred to'... reading articles... you expect someone to do that in Slashdot? :)

Much more kudos to her then. I know I probably suck too much at coding (not my line of work) to pass the same exams without considerable study.

Re:Get them young huh?

[carninja]

Y3K won't be a problem, at least as far as the date problem goes. Y10K, on the other hand, will.

But who cares, we won't be around.

Don't mind me. Just nitpicking.

Re:Big deal.

[Saib0t]

(first time her father and her left Pakistan)

Not so, it's the first time they've been in the USA...
quote:

Her mother and two brothers, ages 3 and 7, stayed home while she and her father came to the United States. It was the first trip to the country for both.

And pakistan may be a third world country, but she certainly isn't representative of the people living there.
quote:

her father, Amjad Karim, who serves with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Africa

Impressive girl though, too young yet to realise how crap Microsoft (as a company) really is.

It's only fair

[sczimme]

Okay, when will MS start getting their certification in while kids are in pre-school?

MS allows them to get certifications; the pre-schoolers provide guidance on new MS GUIs.

but

[Errtu76]

she's 10 now, right? So in six years (dunno what country rules apply here) she can put her knowledge into practise? Wow. By that time she'll need upgrade courses because these certificates will be of no use.

Re:But

[chawly]

She doesn't have to - she runs ON Linux.

Poor kid...

[DarkDust]

Now if she also has exposure to BASIC her mind will be crippled for the rest of her life...

I really hope somebody donates this kid a Mac or Linux box...

Urgh

[squoozer]

This has got to be the most vomit inducing story I have ever read.

Has this kid got nothing better to do then study for these exams (which will be meaning less by the time she is old enough to use them). I can't help feeling that this has more to do with the parents than the kid. Shame she won't get to grow up like most children. I can see it now. Most of us look back and say that childhood was the best time in our lives (well an ok taime at least) she'll look back and wonder why she was studying for an MCP exam.

What I am supprised about is that I was under the impression that India was still suppressing it's women. Looks like at least some areas are changing.

Re:Urgh

[An Onerous Coward]

She's from Pakistan, not India. As near as I can tell, Pakistan is very nearly an Islamic theocracy. India may have some problems, but being from Pakistan makes the story far more impressive.

I don't think your accusations are fair. It sounded to me like her parents were simply giving her further opportunities to explore a field that she discovered on her own and pursued on her own.

Me, I don't have memories of this idyllic childhood you describe. What I remember was being bored bored bored so bloody bored. I lived in a rural town, and didn't have many friends. So my summers were spent watching television. We didn't even have cable. I don't think FOX was even a network at that point. Meanwhile, this girl is pursuing an education in a highly technical field, earning some measure of fame, traveling abroad to meet one of the most powerful and influential men in the world, and chewing him out for not hiring enough women.

Maybe I'm living vicariously through this kid. Maybe her parents are also. But my first impression is that she's having one rockin' childhood, and I'm pleasantly jealous.

Unfortunate Paragraph

[zaguar]

Afterward, Arfa described Gates as an "ideal personality," explaining that he had been second only to Disneyland on her list of things she wanted to see in the United States. Previously unaware of the casual dress code at Microsoft, she said she had expected Gates to be wearing a suit but was surprised to find him in a casual shirt with the top button open.

Wonder how Bill is feeling now! Richest guy in the world upstaged by Disneyland?

Re:Unfortunate Paragraph

[Orkie]

He will be gutted.

Nonsense

[Andrew Cady]

My guess - based on more than 20 years of purely anecdotal evidence - is that it has something to do with the rampant immaturity and mysogynism of a significant minority of the males who choose some sort of computer work for a profession.

Nonsense. The vast majority of self-taught programmers under the age of 15 who have never met another programmer are surely boys. Please explain that -- or deny it and tell me what happens to all those girls who know how to program, but don't.

By the way, I've met huge numbers of programmers who are not in IT in any way -- they are all males. The only female programmers I know program for a living and for nothing else.

(I'm not denying there are females programming free software; I know for a fact there are. I just don't know any of them).

Re:Big deal.

[Flyboy Connor]

However, if she is eager to start hacking away, and Microsoft won't hire her now, she should be encouraged to contribute to the Open Source community - even on a Windows project. That way, she will learn not only how to code more, but also learn how to interact with developers across the globe. That, at that very young age, will surely look extremely impressive and will teach her infinite things.

Hmmmm. How deliciously evil. I like your thinking. THIS is the way to take on and replace the evil empire!

Or were you thinking "about programming" when you said "teach her infinite things"?

You do realize...

[tkrotchko]

You do realize that you're taking issue with a 10 year old, right?

Um my company does

[sl4shd0rk]

"10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn't hire people her age."

We have plenty of ten-year-olds running around where I work. Hell, even some five-year-olds. They are always whining and bitching, or throwing a fit about something. Somedays I wonder if we need to expand daycare.

How evil of them!

[zlogic]

They know that a child's mind is more vulnerable than an adult's and less defended from propaganda. Now this kid will be talking at school how cool it is to be MS-certified, how cool MS products are and how cool it is to be written about on Slashdot. Of course, other kids will want to do that too and get addicted to MS products. The certificate isnt's not only the knowledge of the product, but, as someone pointed out, the "MS-like way of doing things". And that means that to copy photos from a digital camera you should use the Camera Wizard or what's its name. Not because it's better than using any file manager, but because Microsoft made it and put into Windows XP. If it exists, you should use it, right? Who knows, maybe MS is giving away certificates just to make sure everybody has one. And if a person has a certificate with a well-knows company name on it, will he/she use any non-MS product? I guess not.

Re:Get them young huh?

[R.D.Olivaw]

Sith apprentices are called younglings too??

Re:Get them young huh?

[makomk]

But what good is a certification in Logo? I guess coding for Windows beats making shoes for Nike.

Not much use, though some variants are surprisingly powerful. (May run under Wine, on a good day. Probably also a good way of pwning Win98-running school PCs, if they have it installed...)

umm... wow!

[LWolenczak]

Well that sucks, I did it when I was 14, but nobody got me any press... I did take just over a year to get my mcse when I was 16... still 9 years old for a mcp, wtf!

Revolt from within or...?

[praksys]

Why is it that so many Microsoft publicity campaigns make the company sound like an evil despotism? Like that "thought theives" campaign they had a while back. I mean really - if Microsoft is after the thought thieves then that immediately suggests that they are the thought police right? And now this story that sounds like a press realease from North Korea.

Is it because Microsoft really is like an evil despotism so they can't help sounding that way, or is someone doing some subtle undermining from within?

she can get all the qualifications she likes...

[Xargle]

Her job will still end up being offshored to.... oh.

Decision time!

[Guppy06]

Is this a damning indictment of Microsoft's certification program, or a damning indictnment of Pakistan's child labor laws? Seriously, why would a nine-year-old need an MCP?

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[jimmypw]

True, It doesn't say anything about this girl doing the entire MCSE.
TBH imvho a girl of 9 could not complete the MCSE for stuff like in depth Microsoft Exchange MTA stack communication, or Security Concepts of a windows networking system.

Regardless i'd like to say a very well done to her. Regardless of what was actually passed you have to be somthing special to pass an MCP exam at age 9.

also shows the worth of MS Dev Qualifications

[Xargle]

If you can be certified having written a sort and a calculator app.

"We'd like you to work on our video editing application immediately"
"Sure! Does it need a calculator?"

Re:Big deal.

[Guppy06]

I was even more pathetic in high school.

edit autoexec.bat
echo Get out while you still can!

Pissed my programming teacher to no end. She tried attrib to keep me out, but I simply made sure to reset the attrib settings to what she had after I was done editing.

It was a heck of a lot more fun than the BASIC she was supposedly teaching. I had about as much patience for designing silly little flowcharts for that class as I did writing outlines for my papers in English.

Re:Get them young huh?

[Horus1664]

This falls in nicely with the overall MS strategy. They no doubt hope to integrate learning about MS software and applications into infants school right there alongside the three R's as part of a basic preparation for adult life....(a bit like they integrate other people's 'applications' into Windows)

Joking aside, how long before some enterprising MSerf makes a serious suggestion along those lines ? Am I alone in being a little worried about that ?

9 year old getting a MCP degree?

[John Betonschaar]

Is it just me or shouldn't 9 Year olds be playing outside and having fun with their friends instead of taking exams to become 'Microsoft Certified Professionals'? It sounds like boring stuff for adults to me, and IMO children should be spared this kind of crap until they're older... I mean seriously, when they're older they'll spend 2/3'ths of the rest of their life (excluding sleeping) working, I'd say in your childhood try to have some fun while it lasts...

Re:9 year old getting a MCP degree?

[John Betonschaar]

Yeah but did you take MCP exams as well... Ah well, forget about it... After all, this *is* slashdot ofcourse...

Re:Big deal.

[blacklite001]

Of course what this also means is that C# is so state-of-the-art awesome that writing a calculator is Serious Business.

poem?

[dekket]

I wonder how much money she received to write that poem...

I wrote Bill a poem too...

[djupedal]

Dear bill they love you there in pakistan
you know how hard it is to be an also ran
and since the trial you've been working so hard on your tan
to do everything you think you duly can
to be doted on and smiled at by even just one fan

The EU said go away...China said come back another day, so now it's third world slumming for you while you pray
that you don't end up in a pakistani jail where you'll get blown away. die bill die

The Poem

[Evil W1zard]

Oh Mr Bill Gates
How your OS irritates
And now you buy spyware to sell
It Blue Screen's of Death
On every third breath
Thank you for the OS from hell.

Yes and no.

[rjh]

First, congratulations to her: yes, it's an accomplishment. The only reason we think it's a major accomplishment, though, is we've been fooled into thinking kids can't learn complex things. We mistakenly think that kids are capable of much less than they are--not because the kids can't perform up to their capability, but because the educational system doesn't do the kids justice.

I was lucky. When I was in elementary school and showed a real gift for computers, several teachers went considerably out of their way to put me in groups of people who knew what they were doing. By the time I was nine, I was spending my summers in the local community college's computer lab. I wasn't taking college courses, no, but my teachers hooked me up with a student named David Carlson and asked if he could just spend an hour each week answering my questions.

David became my best friend in no time flat. An hour a week turned into a considerably more during the summertime, between his jobs and other commitments. I learned LISP from David (on a Symbolics LISP Machine--talk about your sexy hardware). Shortly after I turned ten, David showed me the Y-combinator. It took me a few weeks to understand it, but when I did--whoa! I was blinded, just blinded, by the beauty of it.

Then we moved away to a different city, different school system. Supposedly this one was much better, but there were no longer any teachers who'd go out of their way to recruit college students into letting me hang out with them for a while. They expected me to go through the exact same hoops as anyone else. I wasn't even allowed to take Programming in BASIC at the high school level. No more LISP Machines for me. From '86 to '92, I had no access to any machines more powerful than an Apple IIgs, and no languages more powerful than Basic. I wouldn't get access to a LISP environment again until I got to college in '94.

Now I'm a graduate student. Last semester I took a course in programming language theory, where we were exposed to the beauty of the Y-combinator. And to think... I knew the Y-combinator when I was just ten years old, just due to the kindness of a smart college student who wasn't smart enough to know "the Y-combinator is too much for kids".

David Carlson was the finest teacher I ever had, because he didn't have preconceptions about what I could or couldn't learn. And as soon as we moved away and my education got turned over to bureaucrats who were concerned about "age-appropriate academic skills", I got left out in the cold.

David died a couple of years ago of brain cancer, way before his time; he was barely forty. He left behind a wife and kids, and you know what? I think those kids are going to turn out to be geniuses. Because he and his wife were too damn dumb to know their kids couldn't possibly learn things.

Re:Yes and no.

[jeffehobbs]

That's a truly beautiful and inspiring story. Thanks for taking the time to share it.

~jeff

Re:Yes and no.

[pegr]

He went eight years without his "precious" because he submitted to the collective will of some brain-dead academic airheads? What's smart about that?

Sometimes opportunity knocks. Other times, you have to roam the streets until you find it, beat it over the head, and drag it back to your place kicking and screaming... Where you have your pit already prepared... Some nice swing albums from the forties, a couple of car batteries, a fifty-pound bag of lime, bottle of ether... Wait, what were talking about again?

Re:Yes and no.

[$raim_n_reezn!]

Sometimes especially when you're at the mercy of your parents e.g. I grew up in west africa and was way smarter than most of my colleagues but my mom being a teacher insisted that I was better off being 'mature' that moving ahead...it's hard to escape over there because you can't question your folks and opportunities were few and far between...

Re:Yes and no.

[Vacindak]

I taught my little brother C# when he was 11. He's not an incredible super genius or anything, he just had a half-way decent teacher who understood that you don't teach an 11-year-old C# the same way you teach a college student.

I taught myself BASIC when I was 9, and I was writing games with 3D wireframe graphics (entered the spatial coordinates and line segments all by hand no less) by age 12. Mostly in BASIC (with the aid of a C library for the graphics), since it was several years before I saved up enough money to get something besides the 286 and the TRS-80. How did I pull any of that off? Yeah... I had a good teacher who was willing to take the time to help me out.

The secret? Keep them interested. You can teach anyone anything if you can get them genuinely interested.

Of course, now I regret that I didn't teach him Ruby instead.

Re:Yes and no.

[burnunit0]

wow. That was like the most rewarding post on slashdot I've read all year, no joking (also a very humane story). We were just having this discussion about our two year old and "age appropriate" toys last night and now I have a way to think about it that's very insightful.

Re:Yes and no.

[ShyGuy91284]

Lucky bastard, lol. I had a IIGS, which wasn't very suitable for programming in comparison to other computers as you know ("IBM Compatable" as they were called), and the closest I ever got to programming at an early age was finding a book called "Sound & Graphics on the IIGS". I think it was in BASIC also. But every try learning to program from a book that doesn't really teach? It's rather difficult, especially at such a young age.... It really does make you wonder how many children of the age where they can read could learn something like programming if given the proper teaching and opportunity.... Although they would probably loose motivation after learning how much code it takes to do such simple tasks.

Re:Yes and no.

[eck011219]

Then we moved away to a different city, different school system. Supposedly this one was much better, but there were no longer any teachers who'd go out of their way to recruit college students into letting me hang out with them for a while. They expected me to go through the exact same hoops as anyone else. I wasn't even allowed to take Programming in BASIC at the high school level. No more LISP Machines for me. From '86 to '92, I had no access to any machines more powerful than an Apple IIgs, and no languages more powerful than Basic. I wouldn't get access to a LISP environment again until I got to college in '94.

I agree with what you're saying, but I wonder if it wasn't a bit more complicated than that. Geographic location, understaffing, all kinds of things can contribute to overworked teachers not being able to focus on individual students' needs or potential. I'm not a teacher, don't really know any teachers personally, and so on, so my only real experience with this is that I went to school (mostly - there was a stretch there in high school where I frequently liberated myself from the confines of the attendance policy. But I digress ...).

I had a moderate to severe stutter (still do) and very advanced artistic skills, and my parents simply had to augment my schooling with classes outside of the system because there was only so much attention to go around, and most of what teachers wanted or had to work on with me was related to my speech.

Frankly, I was quite fortunate to have a school system that hired teachers who would take that extra time for whatever reason. As were you - I always wonder how many kids here in the Chicago school system have remarkable skills that are going unnoticed because the teachers are woefully understaffed.

I'm sorry about David - sounds like he was a great guy. That's a particularly ironic and cruel way for him to go, too.

And kudos to this little girl - Microsoft track or not, that's quite an accomplishment and quite a wakeup call to companies like MS that there are loyalties to be won. I mean, I don't want more kids running about with MS all over their brains, but if this encourages some of the other companies and organizations (Apple, Redhat, Adobe, Apache, etc.) to provide supplemental education to kids in order to encourage educated purchasing decisions and development trends ten years from now, it would be an improvement over the current system of kids on nearly-dead computers learning computer science from the shop teacher or buggy computer learning games (no offense to shop teachers - it's just that there really should be a dedicated teacher for this kind of stuff). I'm sure they all provide some of this in various schools, but I'm talking about a full-on frontal assault with major resources.

An unbiased tech education would be better, of course, but given where the money is, any extra tech ed would be an improvement.

Re:Yes and no.

[gosand]

We mistakenly think that kids are capable of much less than they are--not because the kids can't perform up to their capability, but because the educational system doesn't do the kids justice.

Well, yes and no. There are kids who can't keep up with the current educational system. It could be argued that they need more help. The smart kids will do OK if they don't get as much guidance. They could do better if they got more, but you get the idea.

And I am not saying this is how it should be, but I kind of understand why it is like that. My wife taught at a private middle-school for gifted kids. She was the French teacher. Even in that setting, where all they got was personal attention, there was a big difference between the ones at the top of the class and the bottom. In the 6th grade, the kids at the bottom could speak and write French, but struggled. The kid at the top translated a Star Wars novel into French and programmed in Perl (which is kind of like a foreign language) :) It was tough for her as a teacher to keep up with the slowest and the fastest kids. In public schools it is the same way.

All this in an environment where people love to bitch about the quality of education, but don't pay teachers what they are worth and expect endless hours out of them.

Re:Yes and no.

[Glog]

Kudos man, I think this is one of the greatest educational stories I've heard. I don't have kids yet but when I do I'd like to be a father like David.

Re:Yes and no.

[amliebsch]

There are kids who can't keep up with the current educational system. It could be argued that they need more help. The smart kids will do OK if they don't get as much guidance. They could do better if they got more, but you get the idea.

It is this attitude that is responsible for the sorry state of education in this country (USA). The vice principal of our high school infamously remarked that students such as myself would learn "by themselves in a dark closet with a flashlight." Perhaps intended as a compliment, but used to justify cutting programs for students who were motivated and wanted to learn so that the resources could be spent on bringing "making everyone above average."

It is simply not the case that everyone has the same potential. You cannot make those with lesser abilities equal to those with greater abilities, unless you are willing to try to drag down those with the greater abilities, and sadly it seems that this is becoming more and more the modus operandi. This is tragic, because those minds are our most vital natural resource; we are plundering them for the purchase of a tiny slice of equality that does little but make us feel good.

All this in an environment where people love to bitch about the quality of education, but don't pay teachers what they are worth and expect endless hours out of them.

Are teachers professionals or not? They want to be treated like professionals and paid like professionals, but they don't seem to want to be held accountable like professionals or work long, hard hours like professionals. People might be willing to pay much more for good teachers if the teachers' unions didn't make them subsidize poor teachers at the same time.

Re:Yes and no.

[cloudmaster]

I imagine you've got more room in your ass, after pulling those numbers out - especially since they're much larger than reality.

Table 1 at http://www.aft.org/salary/ shows salaries from a year or so ago (so the data's not *too* out of date). About half of the country averages below $40K for teachers, and below $30K for starting teachers. In case averages are beyond comprehension, that means that, for every teacher making $60K, there's one making $20K

Re:Yes and no.

[CommieOverlord]

Haha, funny. Off-base though.

Any teacher I know, and I know a number at different levels, does not work a six hour day. They frequently also work weekends. That 2-month break you're talking about? Most of that's spent preparing courses and taking classes.

To become a teacher, in this jurisidication, you need 2 under-grad degrees. To get to the top paylevel you need a Masters. Even after 25 years and 3 degrees a teacher makes less than someone with similar qualifications in a different field.

The entry level job I got after getting my B.Scs paid more than a friend who has a Master's and has been teaching for several years. I also have a far easier job.

Re:Yes and no.

[gosand]

Are teachers professionals or not? They want to be treated like professionals and paid like professionals, but they don't seem to want to be held accountable like professionals or work long, hard hours like professionals. People might be willing to pay much more for good teachers if the teachers' unions didn't make them subsidize poor teachers at the same time.

Well, I am not as familiar with teacher unions. My wife taught at a private school. Lots of wealthy, extremely demanding parents. And she still didn't get paid that well.

Teachers don't want to work long hard hours? They are ONLY there because they love it. Again, from my experience, they have to work at least 2-3 hours every night on the things that they couldn't get done while at school. And there are the weekends, field trips, after-school events, etc.

Re:Yes and no.

[gosand]

Look, I know you are a troll, but there are others out there who might swallow your tripe.

Yes, I agree six hours a day, 280 days a year is way too much for $40,000- $60,000 a year.

Your numbers smell like poop because of where you pulled them. I knew when I read this you would spout the "and they get summers off!" garbage too. You didn't disappoint.

(most of the time the teachers used the same lesson plans year to year)

Bzzzzt. That is very hard to do. You can do roughly the same things, but I can guarantee that it isn't the same year to year.

that's only 8 or 9 hours of actual work.

Not counting grading. My wife taught 100 kids. Grade homework for 100 kids every other day, including essays, for a language class.

And then they have the summer off and at least a week or two for every major holiday.

Right. Unless they are required to take classes, or teach summer classes. Oh yeah, she always got 2 weeks off for President's day. ROFL.

As far as compensation goes they get awesome medical/dental/vision coverage and an excellent retirement plan.

Take another hit off that pipe.

Add to that, the protection of a strong union.

Not all teachers are union.

Re:Yes and no.

[zifferent]

Really! Most teachers I know have plenty of time during the summer to golf and spend time at their summer house (Yes, I said summer house!) during the summer, and well into the school year. The school district I worked in was one big babysitting service (my son came home, bored from watching movies in class instead of being taught litterally 2 or 3 days out of the week! and this is kindergarten!) and the teachers can't even babysit the kids correctly. The computers were constantly vandalized. I've had hard drives and video cards stolen right under the teacher's noses. While it's true that there's a diciplinary issue in the schools, there's still alot of room for improvement in many classrooms. The good teachers have control over the classrooms and the kids learn in them. The point is when a teacher decides to throw in the towel and doesn't care anymore, there is no way to discipline or fire them for not performing. Many teachers take advantage of the tenure/union system and will blow off their last 10 or 20 years till they hit retirement. And you can't tell me teachers that don't care don't exist. When we blocked webgames, several teachers protested that they need them for after the kids finish their work. The truth was they needed them to keep the kids occupied while so they can more effectively ignore them. It might be the beginning of class and three quarters of the are playing games. I would hazard to guess that for every good teacher at that school there were at least two or three horrible ones. My boss was married to a teacher and admitted that a teachers job is the skate way to go. So much so that his son with an Engineering degree gave up engineering to become a teacher because it was the easy way to go. He may have made more money in engineering but it didn't matter to him. Next, in college who had the easiest class schedule? I think the pecking order was Engineering /Sciences and then the Business people and finally at the bottom of the barrel were the Education and Phys Ed Majors. And yes they have to be certified, and they do have to keep their certifications up, but in the district I was in, inservice days were provided where the school would bring in trainers to provide seminars (at the district's expense, I might add) to satisfy the certification requirements. And the teachers were paid for comming in that day! Now in my departement there we were expected to pay for our own certifications and study on our own, read upaid, time and pay for our own study guides and resources. The teachers may start out at $30K and below, but once they get their tenure it increases significantly and steadily from there. A teacher who has been in the union for 30 years or so could easily expect to be paid $55K plus. And I don't know where you come from, and it may not be CIO salary, but that's still damn good money. Finally, if the the pay were lower the ones becoming teachers would be the ones that want to be teachers. As it is, teaching offers a decent salary and plenty of time off. As it stands the teaching profession is extremely attractive to slackers. I'm not completely opposed to paying teachers more. I think making school year round and including more business-traditional hollidays (an extra day on the weekends for most hollidays and maybe 3 days for christmas.), and then giving teachers vacation days, just like normal business would fix almost all of education's problems. Then they could pay teachers what they're worth.

Re:Yes and no.

[tetsuji]

I feel your pain. I went through an excellent gifted/talented schooling program for the first few years of my education, but when my family was forced to move due to my dad's job being relocated, there was no accelerated education to be found in the new place.

It took two years for the school system to catch up to where I had been, and my parents wouldn't let me advance because they were concerned about my "social development." As it was, I never fit in with my peers anyway because the stuff they were learning was dull and old to me.

Re:Yes and no.

[Fallen_Knight]

Isn't it in the US you spend all your time and money on getting the idiots to passs and ignore the gifted because they are well off already?

seems to be backwards there somewhat...

Re:Yes and no.

[Fallen_Knight]

amen, i was lucky, my dad was a programmer and he introduced me to C when i was 5 or 6 arounds.. and then bu the time i was ten i KNEW C, was building my own boxes, fried a 486 MB around that time to:), knew pointers arrays and memory management. Now here i am in university in a 300 level course 2 sem ago, CMPT 300 operating systems 1, and 1/2 the class doesn't know or get pointers/memory management.... the teach was teaching C/C++ to the class as he went. SAD!

with the next crop of programmers its gonna be hard to find truly GOOD programmers with the current system. least that means there will be well paying jobs for low level guys like me lol.

Re:Yes and no.

[Kymermosst]

First, congratulations to her: yes, it's an accomplishment. The only reason we think it's a major accomplishment, though, is we've been fooled into thinking kids can't learn complex things... [snip]

Somewhat agreed.

Many kids can't learn certain complex things. When I was a kid, couldn't play basketball. Music was complex. Painting a picture was complex. I couldn't do any of these.

Complexity is often a matter of perception, and quite often has a lot to do with natural talent. Half the people on Slashdot would say the average football jock is incapable of learning anything complex. I imagine those who would say that have never memorized the contents of a football playbook and probably can't catch or throw very well, either. Then again, the football jock probably wouldn't do well at a bash prompt and doesn't know the nuances of C syntax. He probably doesn't understand why a lot of nerds can't grasp football.

I was definitely on the computer side of things. When I was nine, I wrote a rudimentary operating system (a CP/M clone) in 6502 assembly language. The only part I didn't write myself was the disk driver, taken from Apple DOS 3.3 (RWTS for those of you in the know), which I disassembled from machine code so I could assemble it at another location and make some modifications. The system booted up to a command prompt and could load files that were pre-placed on the disk by hand, but I didn't know enough about storage techniques at the time to complete a good file system. Eventually I lost interest.

Somewhere around that time, I also wrote a RAM disk driver for said Apple DOS 3.3, again in 6502 assembly language. Did I mention that I also knew Z80 assembly language, too? I wrote CP/M programs as well.

Nobody would have sent me to college to learn anything, though... you see, I kept failing classes in public school. I did fifth grade twice. I almost didn't graduate high school, and when I did, I barely scraped up a 2.0 GPA.

There are may factors in my performance, but basically I was disinterested in school. I started skipping a lot in high school, not to do drugs or smoke or even anything at all. Just to get away from school.

I'm still a bit disinterested in school, but when I'm paying for it (sort of... I have a full ride), it's different - as evidenced by my 3.8 GPA in college.

So now, after having been in the military, and then college?

Music is still complex. I've taken 15 credits in music, and gained a rudimentary understanding, but it is still really complex. I've tried playing basketball off and on, but making the ball go into the basket is a complex task, to me anyway. I still have trouble drawing anything more complex than a stick figure. My wife is a natural at west coast swing dancing, but when she made me take lessons, it turned out to be the hardest thing I ever tried to learn. (Yeah, I said 'wife'... for many slashdotters, though, just getting a woman to talk to them is a complex task!)

Perceived complexity. What one person thinks is "easy", another thinks is "hard". It may even be true, because we have different talents and minds don't all function the same.

Re:Yes and no.

[Fallen_Knight]

umm, i'm at university. Learning more building on what i already know. Problem is its takeing till 3 year for me to learn anything new at all.

i program for a living, windows applications and device drivers, and i see code from big name hardware companies all the time, and its SHITTY. can't say names, but when you get a drier and told "it works perfectly" then it doesn't work for you, and it never could have because some idiot used & instead of && in a hug if else, and then the fact it was a huge if else that could have been done properly as a table lookup and.. well i could go on and on.

I've seen shitty class after shitty class taught by shitty professors sometiems to at a GOOD BIG university, www.sfu.ca.

and i'm not going to waste any mroe time on a AC

Re:Yes and no.

[coreymichaelbarr]

Serious question: How does a kid develop a relationship like this without 1) finding a child molester, and 2) making people think it's a child-molesting relationship?

I ask because when I was much younger, I met a Microsoft employee who I possibly could have developed that kind of a mentoring relationship with. My mother put the kibosh on it because of her fears of the above. Silly, yes. But if I ever wanted to be in the mentor part of this equation, I would be afraid that somebody else's mother would have the same fears. I'd like to learn how to prevent that.

Re:Yes and no.

[John Seminal]

They say in our life, it comes down to a handful of people as to how we turn out.

Two or Three good people throught childhood, and we can be anything. One or two bad teachers who tell us we are dumb, and we learn to be.

I believe humans can be anything, and what stopps us from achieving great things is the crippling adults force on us. Maybe it was the bully who for two or three years terrorized the weaker kid. Maybe it was the teacher who had no faith and treated a student like an idiot- "Here are 50 math problems to bore you, and if you don't finish them all I will punish you like you are stupid".

Or maybe it was a teacher who treated all his students kindly, let them read and chase their curiousity. It reminds me of my 2nd grade teacher. We had a science fair, and I made the solar system... you have seen it 100s of times, the foam balls, the yellow one in the middle is the sun and so on. My teacher ripped me a new asshole, that the sizes of the balls were all the same, this and that. I felt dumb and humiliated in front of my class. My 4th grade teacher had a science fair again, and I figured screw it, I'll do the same thing over. But this time, he did not critisize anything, he just leaned in and listened to everything- the names of moons and planets. This teacher was so interested, like it was the first time he ever saw a model of the solar system. Well, he had a few question, which made me get more interested and caused me to visit the local library to read a book or two. It is amazing what kindness can do, compared to the bitch I had in the second grade.

I trully believe life comes down to who we meet and who we know. If we have caring friends, we will live well.

And I agree with the others, that is one of the best posts I have read on Slashdot. It makes me want to do something nice for someone else.

Re:Yes and no.

[eck011219]

I don't think I did any such thing. What I did say, however, is that schools should have dedicated computer departments rather than trying to tack it on to the curriculum with existing staff. The reason I think this is that most teachers are stretched so thin as it is that focus on individual students' educational needs is impractical and too detrimental to other students to be possible.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear - I feel that teachers are being double-booked by underfunded school systems and therefore kids aren't getting the full benefit of a department dedicated to computer science. This is going to be essential to their future success - as full an understanding as possible of how computers work and how they can be used is going to define one of the major components in their employability and flexibility later on. And being taught computer science by a teacher who was handed the task late in the game isn't going to do them any extra favors.

Also, what you're talking about is taking an academic teacher and asking him or her to add a coaching gig (and before anyone else barks at me, please understand that I do appreciate the intelligence necessary to coach sports - it's just a different mindframe than computer science or mathematics). It would be different to take, say, the 70-year-old football coach from my high school (that and coaching JV and varsity wrestling were his full-time job) and ask him to teach computer science. He's not up to the task, never having taken the course himself (or as far as I know, ever had anything but contempt for computers - but that could just be this one guy).

So really, I don't think I'm dogging anyone - in fact, I think I'm pointing out that there are several things that cannot be simply added to a teacher's task list without detrimental results, and that I personally think that for numerous sociological and practical reasons it is not inaccurate to say that doing this in one direction (academic to athletic) is slightly more likely to be feasible than the other (athletic to academic).

So flame away, all - I don't know if there is a way to phrase what I'm trying to say without pissing one side or the other off (or both if I'm good), but I really didn't mean to dog either side.

I suggest...

[AtlanticGiraffe]

I suggest that we start calling MS "The Kindergarden" in future flamebait comments.

and she wrote a poem on Billy G.'s life story

[brian6string]

There once was a boy named Billy
Who's friends all thought he was silly
For spending his time
writing line after line
of code in hopes he'd make a milli--

There once was a man named Bill
what he couldn't buy he would steal
as his company grew
he wound up in a stew
yet somehow he maintained his zeal.

There once was a man named Gates
Said he never made any mistakes
Through security flaws and cheesy firewalls
His Windows my machine overtakes.

There are two ways to study for the test

[bigtallmofo]

I've formerly held an MCSE certification (expired with Windows NT 4.0), currently hold MCSD (on the Visual Basic 6 track) and also currently hold MCDBA (on the SQL Server 2000 track).

I find there are in general two ways to study for the tests (each with variations):

1. Aquire some real world experience, study the material, maybe take some practice tests (like Transcender) and then take the real tests. 2. Go to www.braindumpcentral.com and find the questions and answers that will be on the test and memorize them, then take the real tests.

If she went path #1, it's fairly impressive. Though I think back to when I was 10 and programming proficiently in 6502 assembly and Commodore BASIC on my C-64 and I realize that children of that age aren't actually incompetent.

Re:That's the point

[zedenne]

sounds familiar.

i was forced to do a certification in vb5 many years ago (so the company could get some certification based on its employees or something) and around 20% of it required detailed knowledge of ActiveX documents and the like, which no one in their right mind was using!

This convinced me...

[WRoach]

Pakistan and india are the only two countries that I know of where many of the geeks are women who are good looking and its considered a good thing to be living with your parents as an adult until you are married...think about it!

That's it, I'm outsourcing myself.

XBox certified professional

[rasty]

I didn't know they had such a thing! =)

Re:Get them young huh?

[BigDogCH]

Which elementary school teachers are you referring to? Those that I know wouldn't have a clue what this was about. Also, they themselves don't give "a shot about technology."

Re:Epic Haiku

[IInventedTheInternet]

Mister William Gates
He has more money than God
Terrible hairstyle

More you say?

Microsoft Windows
Two hundred dollar software
Not in Pakistan

Let me get this straight...

[ninja_assault_kitten]

You're comparing writing a symphony to getting your MCSE?

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Threni]

(Some people have very poor reading comprehension skills, don't they?)

I'll spell it out: I'm saying that just because one 8 year old can do something doesn't mean that it's easy.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[dillon_rinker]

If an 8-year-old can do it, and you haven't demonstrated that the child is a genius, then a reasonable conclusion is that it is easy.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Threni]

> If an 8-year-old can do it, and you haven't demonstrated that the child is a
> genius, then a reasonable conclusion is that it is easy.

So, an 8 year old has passed an exam - they must be clever. Perhaps the exam is worthless though, because if an 8 year old has passed it, it must be easy. Have any other 8 year olds passed it? No. Still, they can't be a genius because they're only 8 and passed an exam. And if other 8 year olds had passed it, then they can't be geniuses either because of the other 8 year olds that passed it.

You've made your point loud and clear!

Re:Let me get this straight...

[KanSer]

I've been saying this for years. A 10 year old could do any MCSE's job.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Locutus]

but the kid wrote a poem about Bill Gates' life! surely that is a sign of genius.

I think the last kid who took the exam and passed it was 10 years old AND I heard an MCSE ask what the IP address of an ethernet cable was... So, the kid could be a genius, she could not be a genius, and taking and passing the MCSE exam does not give ANY insight regarding the kids intelligence. The fact that the kid worships Bill Gates tells me the kid is more of a drone than a queen-leader type.

I'll have to read the poem. I'm sure there's plenty to laugh at in there.

LoB

Re:Let me get this straight...

[johansalk]

And who told you writing a symphony doesn't require a high level of attainment regardless of talent? I personally would think it a *much* more mature and disciplined activity than passing an MCSE.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[alexhs]

I've been saying this for years. A 10 year old could do any MCSE's job.

When using binary numbers, please precise the numbering base... a 10b year old ... :)

Evil, No?

[Renaissance 2K]

Bill Gates to the world: "I think I'll call him... Mini-Me!"

breaking away at puberty

[CdXiminez]

The good thing about that is, that by the time they go into puberty, they will want to break away from everything parents and school push on them, so they'll go into Linux or Mac.

If this particular girl is as smart as they say, by the time she's in her late teens, she probably will want to have the level of control that Windows cannot give her.

So what ...

[Pegasus]

I was writing my own games on Sinclair Spectrum basic when I was 6. Does this make me a wunderkind programmer? No, just a bored sysadmin who is stuck at the mentality of basic and can't really progress beyond his shell scripts. That's why I'm affraid she's only going to be somewhat above-average secretary when she grows up.

Re:So what ...

[ediron2]

If you're seriously eager to break out of the rut, you can.

For one woman I worked with, it took 3 things: shifting from scripts to python*, *REALLY* figuring out and internalizing what objects were and how to use 'em, and applying that learning to the job. FWIW, good object-oriented code usually breaks big problems down into small, KISS-simple chunks.

Another guy like that realized his limitations and (sigh) became a pointy-haired boss. Unspeakably tragic for the geeks he herds, but profitable for him.

* - python, ruby, whatever. C++ has more pitfalls. For all three langs, the lang isn't the hard part: making a mental transition from scripter to object-oriented-coder is not easy.

Re:So what ...

[FriedTurkey]

As someone who started with BASIC I know what you mean. I actually took some Community College courses to help myself learn real languages. Books just didn't do it until I heard someone explain it to me. Community College courses are cheap. I even put them on my resume but it probably hurts more than helps. :-)

Re:So what ...

[Landazar]

I agree, I was writing my own stuff in basic on Commodore 64 and Apple II at 6 and 7, and I had cool games and some good applications (including a calculator, no GUI) at around 9. I gave it up but when I got to middle school at like 12 I was basically teaching the computer class and got to do cool stuff with the brand new IIgs and the Mac. I mostly played games until later high school when I got back into programming again and do it full time now. If I was a kid today I'd probably have sweet stuff with the tools they've got if my parents got me into it. (Very few 10 year olds are installing linux on their dads machine or searching out compilers, but many might love to use it if someone shows them)

Re:Big deal.

[Nigel_Powers]

Talk abou the pot calling the kettle black! YOU MISSED THE JOKE!

You must be dutch.

Should have

[kc0re]

IF she was that smart she would have strived for her OSX or RCSE certification.

Re:Big deal.

[jgerman]

Having written a calculator and a sorting program in C# along with earning her MCAD, I consider Arfa a computer programmer by any definition.

Good thing your opinion counts for shit. She's got a long way to go before she can be considered a real coder. You obviously were not, since you wouldn't have formed that worthless opinion, but many people on this site were coding at that age. In more difficult languages, with no easy access to learning resources. Guess what, we still didn't really qualify as computer programmers. There's a lot more to it than knowing the syntax of a language and being able to put together trivial applications.

Lets get this girl on OSS

[MaxPowerDJ]

I'm sure that the curiosity of learning new things and the availability of code in OSS will get her hooked.

Little Girl Geek

[greyparrot]

A lot of credit goes to her dad, who obtained what she needed to do what interested her. He did it even though she has two male siblings. Probably there would be more women involved in computing if they had supportive fathers -- it is a great motivating factor.

Also note that she has a very retentive, possibly "photographic", memory. That would be very helpful in retaining whatever nonsense is expected on the exams, never mind the real life solutions that can also be learned from real life developers and administrators.

In any case, she may decide later to pursue the MD instead of the career in computers, as all her abilities will be just as useful, and she might then meet a slightly more pleasant group of people.

Re:Little Girl Geek

[technomom]

Amen to that.

I'm 20 years in the I/T business and still, for some reason, enjoy it. I owe it to my dad who let me play around on a teletype (yes, I am that old...) connected to a mainframe when I was in 4th grade and he was teaching a class. I think I still have the PAPER TAPE(!) I saved the programs on. I still remember the principal coming into the room and asking very nervously what this little girl was doing on the very expensive equipment!

Dad also brought home one of the first TRS-80 computers when I was a freshman in high school. My brother and I spent a lot of time fighting over who could use it. My brother wrote something to keep track of his music collection. I wrote a hangman program. I can still remember keying in a bunch of words from a store-bought dictionary.

I've got kids of my own now, a boy and a girl. But they are not as easy to impress as I was at their age. Whenever I've tried to show either of them a bit of programming, they roll their eyes and say, "Yeah Mom, that's great, can I play my game now?". Maybe I should show them the article.

JoAnn

Mozart?

[sczimme]

Yeah, check out some of Mozarts early work. If he can write stuff like that at the age of 8 then perhaps writing music of genius which will inform and inspire much older composers for centuries is actually a piece of cake!

MCSE? Mozart's Compositions Seed Enthusiasm?

Shame

[bmgz]

more SAD, SAD, SAD stories emrging from the 3rd world, *sob* one can only shed a tear for the poor little girl...

Re:Equal Opportunities to get hooked

[greyparrot]

I'm a female programmer who has lots of other things to do, but got into it by taking a course with a friend.

A few years ago a female friend about 40 years old was visiting, and I showed her how to put a message on the monitor using the built-in BASIC. Then she asked how to change the color and I found that. Then I showed her the random function, the goto, and a few more things. She got hooked really solidly and became some sort of IT person for her department at the bank, which was marketing. No, she doesn't code in C++, but a new part of her English-major brain lit up and didn't stop.

If women often don't play computer games, possibly it has something to do with the fact that we didn't get into War outside on the playground. We do lots of artsy things though. If I were a little girl now, I would probably be messing around with the screensavers in Open Source, which are math mostly; and new visual/musical forms. First person shooters just don't do anything for me, although we all did a few Pong and PackMan sessions when that was popular.

perfect match!

[bmgz]

Maybe Microsoft Kid's parents can pre-arrange a marriage for them?

Re:Get them young huh?

[lowrydr310]

When did Microsoft start brewing beer?

Re:Get them young huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sith apprentices are called younglings too??

No, children strong in the Force were brought to the Jedi temple as young as possible and were called younglings until they gained a master at which point they became padawns. After that of course they go up the heirarcy to Jedi Knight and then to Jedi Master (and within Jedi Master they can be eleveated further by being appointed to the Jedi Council). Sith did not take such young children as apprentices and the apprentices they did take were just described with generic words such as apprentice or protégé.


Wow, that was my nerdiest post ever.

An inevitable trend

[ehaggis]

First of all, congratulations to her.

That being said, I believe this is the beginning of a trend. As our culture(s) become more technologically savvy it would follow that the age of entry into computer knowledge would continue to drop.

Ask many people in a first world country about how a car works and most would be able to give you a decent explanation. 100 years ago that knowledge would have belonged to an elite group.

The barrier to entry in the computer sciences is dropping and the elite are disappearing, get used to it.

MS cert harder that army basic training

[MECC]

In boot camp, we were told we were being trained at a level equivilent to a third grade learning (military attempt at boosting self-esteem). Third grade is about 8 years old. Since this kid get her cert at 9, we can now assume that MS certification is more difficult than ARMY basic training.

Judging from the MS admins I've dealt with, this seems about right.

Re:Get them young huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

MSFTs 3 R's

Reset, Reboot, Reformat

Re:Get them young huh?

[Orgazmus]

You mean Jugend, right?

Re:You fucking failed it

[Mr. Underbridge]

That's the worst limerick ever

It would be if it weren't missing a line. Now it has to compete for the "worst poem" honors with 90% of high-school haikus.

Where's the humor?

[RamboIII]

I figured that there'd be a lot of "fem-bot" jokes.

Really though, I wonder what type of house-hold she lives in, and how she got involved with the whole Microsoft certification. Surely it's not as easy over there as it is here.

It would be interesting if they were teaching it in schools over seas. Talk about blowing our economy out of the water.

what Kool-aid is she drinking?

[warpSpeed]

A poem of bills life? Yikes! She is only 9, I guess she is not old enough to have grown a hard sarcastic shell yet.

Professional?

[Spudds]

Not to nit-pick, oh wait, yeah to nit-pick:

professional Audio pronunciation of "professional" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr-fsh-nl)
adj.

1.
1. Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
2. Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
2. Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
3. Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
4. Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.

n.
1. A person following a profession, especially a learned profession.
2. One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation: hired a professional to decorate the house.
3. A skilled practitioner; an expert.

(thanks dictionary.com!!)

So basically, the word professional either means you are an expert, or you're paid to do what you do.
Now, I don't remember anything in TFA that mentioned her calming down pissed off clients because their IIS server was taken down by 100 viruses, and I'd hardly call an MCSE an "expert" in microsoft; believe me! I have my MCSE, and I used to deal with a lot of MCSEs! Most of them just learned what the needed to know to pass the tests and didn't know anything about how to actually use the software in the real world.

Words either mean something, or they don't!

-- This has been a Public Service Rant(tm) from the Association of Concerned English Speakers for the Conservation of the English Language.

Re:Professional?

[praxis]

While I understand your ire, I do believe the Microsoft Certified Professional--being the title of a certification--is a proper noun. Proper nouns in my book need not mean what their constituent words mean. My name means "King of Kings," but I hardly live by that dictum literally. I take it as a proper noun.

In either case, I also find software development to be a profession. Anytime one requires learning and skill to create solutions to problems, one is a professional. Contrast this with the unskilled, unlearned, sometimes rote nature of trades.

Of course there is a grey area in between. Does a bus driver use skill to solve problems--sure they do. Do doctors sometimes perform unskilled repetitive tasks--sure they do. I use a rule of thumb that states "if the outcome of the service being rendered affects the clients life to the level at which they will seek out a service provider in which to put their trust and the service provider is personally responsible for the results, the service provider is a professional."

Is a 10-year old who can pass a test a professional? Well, maybe. Certainly one can not rule it out off hand. I would think certainly a budding one.

Oh, and MSCE is not the same as MCP. I believe she has the MCP and not the MSCE as you do. I don't know what the difference between the two are, but they are listed as seperate certifications on Microsoft's web site.

Thats not quite fair

[Lanoitarus]

Mozart was recognized as a genius through general consensus over time and through direct exposure to his works, not by a rigid test drafted by a corporation.

If you recall, there have already been cases of very young kids acing the college board tests, due to very careful tutoring and memorization. Having taken the MS tests, i can hardly imagine that approach wouldnt work if done well enough.

Not to discredit the kid, this is an accomplishment certainly, which indicates atbest a very strong computer aptitude and at worst a very very good memory, both of which are extremely useful skills. But i hardly compare this with mozart.

Re:Thats not quite fair

[Fallen_Knight]

yea your right, from TFA

"she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age." almost all tests are easy when you have a good memory.

"The institute instructors assumed it would take Arfa about a year to go through the process of certification for developing Windows applications. But after four months of study and work, over summer vacation, she passed the required exams."

Seems to me to be just microsoft propaganda. creating apps in windows is drop dead easy now with C# and the other crap they have. and i mean EASY. took a VB course in university making stpid little applications for an easy 3 credit A and its easier then the code i was writing in C at 7 and 8.

NOW when a 9 year old can write/debug drivers or win32 API apps in C let me know. Because THAT is actualy hard! Now back to USB driver code i go..

Re:Thats not quite fair

[petermgreen]

whats really fun with winapi is if you have a mostly ansi app (e.g. delphi vcl) and wan't to use a bit of unicode stuff.

MS documentation gives hardly any detail on how things work when you use unicode and ansi apis in the same app. some things like text out is obvious but other things (involving input messages common controls etc) most deffinately are not.

Re:Thats not quite fair

[0111 1110]

At what age can a child grasp abstract thoughts?

IIRC, It's actually around 7 give or take a year for most people. To truly grok abstract ideas that is. Before that most people are kind of like animals, on autopilot all the time. This is also the time when kids start asking lots of questions about the world around them.

I can't understand why so many females think they can't do something so technical.

I don't think its an issue of confidence. Just a lack of interest. Most women tend to be less interested in computers and other technical stuff. Maybe it has something to do with estrogen. As computers become more and more mainstream and integrated into our lives, women have become more comfortable with them. I think we will eventually see a higher ratio of women working with computers, but not that much higher.

They think guys will be intimidated by them being intelligent.

Yeah. Only people who know how to write computer programs are intelligent. And it takes a genius to learn some C keywords and syntax.

I think this might be true. I scared away several guys in my university as a female who did programming, networking, and business.

Most guys I know prefer geeky women. And intelligent geeky women are even better. You genuinely believe you can get inside someone else's head and know the real reason why they weren't interested in you? If you think so, you are kidding yourself. There is a stereotype about female techies not being attractive. However that generalization is becoming less and less true every year.

The irony is that you probably wouldn't even date a guy who was less intelligent than you. It's sort of like saying 'guys don't like tall women' when what you really mean is you don't like short guys. Most women want the guy to be 'superior' to them in pretty much every area. They may settle for less, but they won't be satisfied with it. In contrast most guys don't give a frack whether his potential girlfriend can impress him in 101 different ways. If she's cute that's more than enough. In fact lots of guys are even willing to live without the 'cute' part.

Re:Thats not quite fair

[The Original Yama]

"she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age." almost all tests are easy when you have a good memory.

Especially the MS ones. They are notoriously easy to pass if you memorise enough brain-dump questions. A photographic memory is a huge advantage for this. It also means that she doesn't necessarily understand the questions. She might just be answering from the 'snapshots' in her memory.

Shame on you!

[adolfojp]

I have never been so ashamed of being part of the slashdot community as I am now.

Taking away any credit of her accomplishment because she took a Microsoft certification is just plain vile and stupid.

Cheers,
Adolfo

Re:Shame on you!

[ShoobieRat]

Agreed.

If the test was exactly the same, but was for Linux, she'd get tons of praise.

Programming at 9 no news there.

[jellomizer]

I started to program when I was 6 years old. In TI Basic. When I was 11 I was programming some fairly advanced applications. (Like a program simular to MS Paint which was impressive in 1989). That is without any outside help except for a book on the programming language. I am by no means a super genius I would consider myself average intelegence. If a child has an interests to learn programming they can learn it quite quickly and be ready to pass the MS Certification as soon as they are able to read and comprehend the test. If the child had proper guidence they can be able to program a lot quicker then I did.

MCP

[bendsley]

Ok, she's an MCP right? And Doogie Howser, M.D. was a doctor at what age?

Anyway, good for her I guess.

Scary

[2names]

Neo: Where am I? Arfa: This is Pakistan. Neo: This isn't Redmond?. Arfa: That's where the gates open to. That's where we're going. But, you cannot go with us. Neo: Why not? Arfa: He won't let you. Neo: Who won't? Arfa: The Gatesman. I don't like him. But my papa says we have to do what the Gatesman says, or else he will leave us here forever and ever.

This time, with the formatting

[2names]

Neo: Where am I?

Arfa: This is Pakistan.

Neo: This isn't Redmond?

Arfa: That's where the gates open to. That's where we're going. But, you cannot go with us.

Neo: Why not?

Arfa: He won't let you.

Neo: Who won't?

Arfa: The Gatesman. I don't like him. But my papa says we have to do what the Gatesman says, or else he will leave us here forever and ever.

Re:This time, with the formatting

[AddressException]

This was stupid the first time. Twice in a row is just lame, regardless of formatting.

Re:This time, with the formatting

[2names]

You really didn't like it, eh?

Oh well, to each his own.

Re:This time, with the formatting

[AddressException]

OK, now you're making me feel bad....

Re:This time, with the formatting

[2names]

Could've been worse...

You could have modded me down, but you didn't.

Thanks for that.

Re:This time, with the formatting

[AgentSmith]

I liked it. Especially the part about Neo being dissed and worried. Heh heh heh, stupid Neo . . .
thinks he's the "one". Everyone knows I'll find him and kill him again, or at least give him the ol' Matrix dutch rub.

Let's find out. I got my copy of Matrix: Revolutions right here.
OK. Pop the DVD in . . . skip to the end and . . .
AWW! Sonofabitch!

Re:This time, with the formatting

[2names]

Nice one.

I actually heard the Agent Smith voice in my head when I read your post.

she'll be too busy...

[Barbarian]

She'll be too busy working in a software sweatshop "taking 'ur jobs" to worry about that.

Re:Get them young huh?

[JFitzsimmons]

It'll be sooner than that. The next "date bug problem" will likely come at the end of the 32-bit length UNIX Epoch in 2038. As the wikipage mentions however, we should hopefully have shifted up to 64 bits by then, which will give us a quite a bit more time.

Re:Get them young huh?

[di0s]

Not to incite a flame war or anything, but to me, a 10 year-old kid getting their MS certification somewhat devalues the certification (see, it's so easy that a kid can get it). True, she may be an incredibly gifted child, but pointing and clicking in MS Word is hardly a brain drain.

haha...

[idiotdevel]

yeah this is why longhorn is such crap

Re:haha...

[ShoobieRat]

Because there's a 10-year-old in Pakistan who passed one test?

Calc.exe

[coolGuyZak]

Hah! Calc.exe can't do comparisons. MS found it too difficult to implement ;)

Re:Get them young huh?

[gvc]

On the contrary, it devalues the child. Someone so gifted should do something more worthwhile than MS hack training.

Poem? I got one of those...

[caudron]

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Your OS is shit.
And so are you.

Please, no applause, just throw money.

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[An Onerous Coward]

The article says she earned a "Microsoft Certified Application Developer" certification, and that she programmed a calculator in C#.

I don't know C#.

This isn't your average nine year old.

Or maybe she is, and we just don't give nine year olds enough credit.

In any case, she did something very cool, and we shouldn't be trying to tear down a little girl to make ourselves feel a bit less like the discontented band of underachievers that we really are. Instead, we should be congratulating her, and encouraging her to get some Linux certifications under her belt.

Rescue them from the dark side

[Qbertino]

There are these kind of youths around. It wasn't just the c64 days were kids could grasp computers.
I bumped into one on the tram 2 years back. He was about to dive into Visual Basic. I talked him into Python and Linux. 4 weeks later he was up and running SuSE and soon after that Debian.
He's allready done an internship with my business, is better than I at handling Linux and recently programmed an application that is about to become a cornerstone of our business. It was his first Java programm.
The point is, that whenever you bump into these kids and teens, we have to get them aware of the light side of the force. I'm shure this girl would rock doint OSS stuff aswell. But now it could be that won't come across it any time soon.

Puke-a-riffic

[tentimestwenty]

Haiku or not, the image of a 10 year old girl reading a poem about how great Bill Gates is, to Bill Gates is enough to make me puke.

Re:wrong

[bigman2003]

Replying to your sig:

When Linux became the great guiding light, leading them all to use Slashdot as their holy place.

Screw you guys...

[h2d2]

Poor girl, just because she choose MS certification instead of no-cert no-recog Linux knowledge she's getting pounded by unkind dicks on Slashdot. Poor girl.

Perhaps the author should have done some more service by pointing out in the story that she got certified in C# and was later internally tested again to verify her skills before being granted a free trip to Redmond.

Bingo - Nowhere on MCSE exams is Knoppix present.

[Seng]

Dead server? Boot Knoppix, restore data... Lost password? Boot Knoppix, recover SAM, crack it (or use any of the reset tools, etc.) The Microsoft way: Install parallel copy of Windows XYZ... proceed with 2 hours of extra BS, then still end up reformatting later :P

Re:Poem? I got one of those...

[ShoobieRat]

Troll.

I prefer Tux Racer in my spare time...

[Seng]

It loads by default in my favorite Linux distro...

Re:Get them young huh?

[jvd]

The thing is, that MCP exams are not about click here, click there. They're about solving problems and finding the best solution. You know, it's not as if the exam asks you "Where is the main windows directory" - "Where do you find Computer Management, what is Active Directory?"

Re:Get them young huh?

[bhtooefr]

Reading it, she seems quite gifted for being a 10 year old.

However, looking at what TFA says she's written (a calculator and a sorting program in C#), it DOES devalue the MS cert.

It seems that she's written that and done some PowerPoint presentations - PPT is pretty easy...

She probably deserves a MOUS (Microsoft Office User Specialist), though. (FWIW, I had an instructor at my college that had a MOUS, and she was convinced that there was a Windows 97. Can you say "braindead"?)

Re:Big deal.

[fraudrogic]

Man...Talk about churning up latent memories. I totally remember doing that in Sears when i was like 10 or 11...except I was more egotistical and wrote:

10 print "Mike is Great"
20 got 10

and you could put a semicolon somewhere in the print statement so there would be no "newline" - basically blanketing the screen.

The test isn't the issue... her rolemodels are...

[EWIPlayer]

Yes, she's smart, and yes we can argue the merits of her certification till the end of time. My concern is that her rolemodel and hero appears to be one of the greediest and shallowest SOB's alive. Unfortunately, the entire world (it now seems) treats greed as a thing to be admired, rather than as the disease it truly is.

I am both happy for this little girl in her accomplishment and intelligence, and pity her, the path she is choosing at such a young age.

It saddens me that the media and the "western dream" is so pervasive as to cut this little girl down and to narrow her view on the world at such a young age. I hope she sees there is more out there than to be a female Bill Gates someday.

Ugh.

Re:Get them young huh?

[Jaruzel]

I don't think It needed a 10 year old kid to devalue it. I think MCPs/MCSEs are doing a good job devaluting themselves.

Here in London, every second street has a 'acredited training centre' which after 4 days of 'intensive' (read, mind numbing) training, they guarantee that anyone can get their MCP. Combine that with Microsoft setting the pass value at ~60% correct answers, and you've got a pretty much useless qualification. I've worked with many MCSEs and only a handful of them actually knew their Kerberos' from their SMBs.

What our industry needs is a cross platform Chartership program, that other professions have. Something that you have to work towards over a period of years. Something that will actually mean something at the top of your CV.

-Jar.

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[Anonymous Coward]

doubt that a married multibillionaire needs to masturbate very often no matter how nerdy he is

Last time I checked, being married wasn't a guarantee to get any regularly.

On the other hand, being a multibillionaire probably means he can be Lewinski'd instead of masturbating.

Re:Get them young huh?

[bujoojoo]

Where's Anakin when you need him?

Re:Get them young huh?

[__aamkky7574]

Sorry, but that's not logically true. Ruth Lawrence was 13 when she received a first-class degree with maths from Oxford Univerity (more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/j uly/4/newsid_2492000/2492853.stm, and you can view her webpage at http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~ruthel/). Is your reaction to think "gee, well, those Oxford maths exams must be easy"?

P.

http://oceanclub.blogspot.com/

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[rikkards]

You forgot to mention that he has donated tons of money (billions?) to good causes. His business ethics are/were questionable but he has done more in other ways to make up for it.

keeping up

[neonsignal]

Pity she's going to have to learn Longhorn by the time she is 10...

Re:Get them young huh?

[bhtooefr]

There's also a date bug at 179 years, 158 days after 1900 or 1904 (depending on version) on some versions of Microsoft Excel, FWIW.

I know there's a date bug around 2164 on NT, but I forget exactly when...

Submitted this two months ago

[Carlos Laviola]

Here are your recent submissions to Slashdot, and their status within the system:

* 2005-05-05 22:04:04 Nine year old girl becomes an MCP (IT,Microsoft) (rejected)

I wonder what makes the story more interesting now that it is old.

Re:Submitted this two months ago

[borgheron]

It's more interesting because it was submitted this time by CowboyNeal.

Don't you know how things work here at Slashdot? Despotism at it's best.

GJC

Re:Submitted this two months ago

[Carlos Laviola]

Use google. I can't find the original Indian newspaper article, but there are plenty of mentions from back then (including one with a picture). The link to Microsoft's own take on the story is dead now, but it's mentioned all over the place.

Re:Submitted this two months ago

[Shadow_139]

You know /. only posts Old or Dupe News....

THe Earth will start spinning backwards if /. had a new uptodate story first.......

Re:Submitted this two months ago

[borgheron]

Oops... didn't notice that.

My apologies, still slashdot's mechanism for deciding what does and doesn't get posted sucks relatively badly.

Also, given that:

1) I normally post at 2 and
2) My karma is excellent

You're wrong about my mod points. Have a nice day.

GJC

Re:Submitted this two months ago

[borgheron]

Actually, you're correct. I thought of that just after hitting "Submit". :)

Hurray for foreign nationals!

[ShoobieRat]

She's 10, and she's from Pakistan. Irregardless of anything else, she's programming and going for certifications. How come we can't get any bum American 10 year olds to do anything? I tell ya, other countries succeed because their people are willing to work. Instead of saying "Let me show you how your computer works," most Americans just throw their kids a playstation. Progress for mind and country, ha!

Congrats to this little girl. May she one day make her country proud.

Actually...

[tsanth]

-the "either..or" construct implies an exclusive-or relationship between the connected topics.

Reference: grammar school and this.

Re:Actually...

[tsanth]

Duly noted.

I didn't see that interpretation at all. Thanks.

Re:Actually...

[stuktongue]

While your post is informative, I believe the parent poster understands the nature of exclusive-or. I think his point was that this situation is probably not an exclusive-or sort of situation, i.e., the kid is probably quite smart AND the MSCP program may not be the most challenging in the world.

Re:Get them young huh?

[bhtooefr]

The installer doesn't run under WINE, last I checked.

However, (AFAIK) it doesn't put anything in the registry or system folders, so you can copy the program folder over to a Linux system.

I never had a problem actually running it on WINE, FWIW.

The point?

[Safety Cap]

That VB sucks a pissing elephant's ass?

Re:Get them young huh?

[SatmanUK]

Think I shall have to concurr with this, with over 15 years of experience of in the computing industry the smartest peopel I have worked with have very little MCP qualification, and some of the most inept have MCSE's . Just goes to show that anyone can read a book and learn it but if they cannot make 2+2=5 they will just be another goat in the herd. What I would like to see is more weight given to references from trusted sources, a bit like the linkedin websites. As for the 10 year old , it shows that age has nothing to do with intelligence and ability when it comes to MS certs, its pretty easy to google for 'assistance' :), if she was a 90 year old there would not even be a post ..

Re:Big deal.

[TheSolomon]

*Brave* young woman? I agree she is talented and motivated, and extremely lucky to have such supportive parents with access to resources that allow her to explore her interests. But *brave*? I understand the odds are stacked against her, and such a feat was previously unheard of in her country, but bravery implies some sort of personal risk and even peril should one follow a certain course of action. This girl simply followed her interests, along with gentle coaxing from a loving parent. Her story is inspirational, yes, but seeing as her family, country, and even Microsoft have been accepting her with open arms, I believe "brave" is just a bit of a distortion of the truth.

Medioce Poetry

[ari_j]

I've read poems written by 10-year-olds, and they all sucked. Really bad. Now you're telling me that she has written "plenty of C#" code. I've also read poems written by C# developers, and they all sucked. Really bad.

I'm sure that Bill Gates was pleased beyond words to hear his life story summed up in a few lines of Vogon poetry.

Re:Medioce Poetry

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Perhaps you should read poems written by Perl developers instead.

Re:Medioce Poetry

[sharkey]

It was the best of vi,
It was the worst of vi.

Re:Medioce Poetry

[James_Aguilar]

You are too skeptical.

Which cert?

[niki9]

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see which certification she got. You can get a certification for an MS Desktop OS, and I know plenty of 9-year-olds who can do that. Good for her and all, but is this really that big of a deal?

Re:Which cert?

[niki9]

Oops, nevermind, toward the bottom: "The certification she received was as a Microsoft Certified Application Developer." Ok, that's a bit more impressive. I should have RTFA more thoroughly before posting. My bad.

Re:Big deal.

[Hanzo]

Speaking as someone who has several MS certs under his belt (and by no means an MS lover, I might add)

I would like to point out yet another over looked point.

These certifications are not cheap by any means. Assuming that she was self taught. Odds are good she still needed the course materials, someone still had to pay for tests, so on and so forth.

Furthermore, any of you who think that this was nothing more than a demonstration of just how easy it is to get certified, I issue this challenge. Go in and take the battery of tests yourself. Do it cold in fact.

Sure there is a lot of microsoft speak which muddies the waters, but even after you cut through it, this is still a difficult task, especially for someone so young.

And who cares if she wrote Bill a poem, when I was her age I ran around my house in my underwear with a tea towel for a cape.

another idea stolen

[Rooked_One]

"Later in the afternoon, she sat outside with S. "Soma" Somasegar, a Microsoft corporate vice president, and described her vision for a self-navigating car. He listened to her ideas and told her about some of Microsoft's existing software for cars." I guess she isn't that smart after all... Thank goodness... I had my noose all ready tied to the ceiling fan.

Re:Get them young huh?

[wpiman]

I think when you devote so much time and effort to studying Microsoft products-- you are certifiable- not certified.

She wrote a poem about him?

[tannhaus]

I wonder what she used to rhyme with "greedy spawn of Satan"?

Re:She wrote a poem about him?

[sfsnedigar]

Ahh man .. thanks for the laugh!

what mcse really stands for

[tabhitter]

must consult someone else...

Re:Get them young huh?

[u-235-sentinel]

I can see the advertisements now. Microsoft Certification. So easy a 9 year old can do it.

Actually... what does that say about their certification if it's that simple? Just a thought.

A Bit of Structure Needed

[jack_csk]

Too bad that you would use gotos
Back when I was a kid, I would instead write:
10 WHILE 1
20 PRINT "k-mart sucks dick!"
30 WEND

Re:A Bit of Structure Needed

[oldwolf13]

that wouldn't work in commodore 64 basic :)

Re:Get them young huh?

[Phisbut]

It'll be sooner than that. The next "date bug problem" will likely come at the end of the 32-bit length UNIX Epoch in 2038. As the wikipage mentions however, we should hopefully have shifted up to 64 bits by then, which will give us a quite a bit more time.

Riiiight... we'll all have shifted to 64 bits by then... it's so far away in the future... and we know it in advance...

Just like we knew from the 70's that Y2K would be a problem, but "let's not worry about it, nobody will use those systems then and they'll all have been replaced by correct systems"

There will still be 32 bits systems around in 2037, and another Y2K craze will hit. Luckily for me, it'll happen just a few years before retirement, which will mean big bucks to be made (since I'll be among the "old coders who know C++", everybody having evolved to C# or Java or C++++++ or whatever the next generation language will be). That Y2.037K is actually part of my retirement plan ;-)

So long suckers!!! :-P

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[KingSkippus]

Well, as long as I'm drawing Flamebait mods...

Maybe, just maybe, because it is a joke

Which on Slashdot, has very little bearing on whether or not it's funny .

Look, like I said, I have no problem with anyone picking on Bill Gates because he wants to rule the software world and destroy people who want to give their software away for free. But there's a huge difference between picking on Bill Gates because he's evil and picking on Bill Gates because he's nerdy. Being a nerd myself, I'll defend him every time against latter attacks, even if it costs me some Slashdot karma.

Hell, I have been known to tell a few self-deprecating nerd jokes. But that's not what this was. This was a malicious attack against a specific person for a quality that almost everyone here shares to some extent. Maybe you also think that <insert ethnicity or physical trait> jokes are funny to a lot of people, and maybe in some situations, some of them actually are. But posting them in a <insert ethnicity or physical trait> forum is not only bad taste, it's a generally assholish thing to do. And when someone who happens to be a <insert ethnicity or physical trait> gets irritated, you shouldn't be surprised.

Re:Get them young huh?

[ArAgost]

you misspelled "Lego".

I think my head just exploded

[foreverdisillusioned]

There are so many disturbing things about that headline...I don't even know where to begin...

Re:Get them young huh?

[colinrichardday]

There's always ucblogo, which runs natively on Linux.

Treble I believe is the term

[TheScienceKid]

Re: "At 10 most slashdotters were still singing soprano and afraid of girl germs (It seems some still are)." < I believe young boys sing "Treble", not "Soprano", which is typically sung by girls, young or old.

-- TheScienceKid (2nd Tenor of four years)

P.S. I forgot to say "That's treble you beowulf cluster of insensitive clods in soviet russia there is no step 3 profit" or somesuch ;)

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[synthespian]

we just don't give nine year olds enough credit.

I think it's marvelous that this kid is so into it, I think she's had wonderful support from her environment. I also think it's great she's "starting her professional life" with C#, not C.

Luckily, Seymour Papert's dream is alive and thriving, and not everyone treats kids as stupid little people. See Squeakland. They're using Squeak Smalltalk in an environment where "(...) kids in fifth and sixth grade learn to simulate gravity and use differential equations in a context much different from most math taught today." There's more here: http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/essay s.html and specially the essay How We Learn

This is so much better than Turtle walking! :-)

actually I think this was the poem...

[spiderworm]

There once was a billionaire nerd

Whose software was simply absurd.

What killed him, of course,

Was he hoarded the source,

And he bloated the hell out of Word.

Peace!

MCSE is what you make it...

[stereoroid]

On one level: yes, it's just a piece of paper. It got widely listed in job specs, so it looked like an easy ticket to a fat paycheck. Hence the growth of the 3rd party crammers, offering a shortcut to the money. How is this Microsoft's fault? The same could happen to Red Hat RHCE if the market was there for it. I think the failures of such a scheme would become obvious more quickly, but by then the damage would be done. The RHCE is more difficult because Linux is more difficult, not because of RH's exams. MS Exam difficulty varies widely, according to your MS experience. I did the NT4 MCSE, finishing in 1999, and while most exams were a walkover, I had to repeat one, for lack of some MS-specific experience. (Laugh if you want - see if I care.) Also, scratch the idea that the MCSE is only about Microsoft. I gained a lot of general TCP/IP knowledge (protocols, routing DNS etc.) that I apply to Linux today. But I'm still glad my current employer hasn't pushed me to "upgrade" to 2000 or 2003 spec, though I will do that myself if I am "decruited"... Judging the MCSE by the clueless crammers is like judging a car manufacturer by its worst drivers.

She can't be *THAT* bright......

[Nagatzhul]

She likes Windoze enough to get certified in it *AND* she is writing poetry about Bill's life.

How twisted is that??

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[WhiplashII]

I would seriously disagree with this! Destroying companies removes jobs and value from the economy, because things that could be done previously can no longer be done. Taking your gains and giving them away to people also destroys economic value for less obvious reasons (essentially it hurts the recipient emotionally and makes them less likely to try to advance themselves). Giving money to people is probably the worst thing you could do with it - for example, pretend that instead of giving his money away he decided he wanted Mt St Helens moved 2 feet to the right. He spends billions, so the net effect to him is the same. Others receive the billions (as salary), so they are also better off. But in addition, the workers at the end can have a feeling of pride - they did something very hard (stupid, yes, but hard).

Donations do not make up for damaging the economy - that is a far less than zero sum game. It is far better for everyone if a rich guy hords his money, but creates economic value (jobs and a better life for everyone). In the long term (more than a single lifetime), economic value is always redistributed. Donations help in the short term, but long term make everyone worse off.

Of course, that said, balance is required in everything. (I currently donate about 20% of my income to charitable institutions...)

When I was 10

[SCHecklerX]

I was learning assembler on a TRS-80 color computer. I think the first generation of home computer hobbiests are a bit more impressive than somebody 10 years old being able to pass microsoft's tests. But that's just my arrogant view of the world :)

Many people back then did a lot of their own hardware too (remember the blackbox kits?)

Predictable

[birge]

I knew this would cause a torrent of posts dismissing her accomplishment by people upset to find their career of choice, for which they went to college, is accessible by a 9 year old girl. Just deal with it. This is what you get for majoring in a hobby and pursuing it for a career. You don't see 9 year old kids passing the cerification exams to be an architect or a chemical engineer, do you?

Offshored by a 10 y/o GIRL :)

[Reservoir Penguin]

"Afterward, Arfa described Gates as an "ideal personality", explaining that he had been second only to Disneyland on her list of things she wanted to see in the United States."
I dont know whats scraier a 10 y/o doing proffessional windows development or the fact that she considers BG an "ideal person" ;/
We must do something to couner the relentless dark side attack on the young minds. It's be nice if some LUG members from Pakistan showed up at her doorstep and had a nice talk with her explaining why BG is evil and install Linux with a noice GNU development enviroment. None of the mono stuff, purhaps as a compromise JSDK+Emacs+JDE

More Power to her

[FuzzyL0g1c]

It's great to see interest in computers that young. Good for her. And Good Job! to MS for letting her take the test and letting her earn the certificate. I actually was a "Level II" Authorized Apple Service Technician at the age of 12. (1982 people) I was from a small town in Arizona and people were nice to me, and many treated it as novelty, as if maybe I didn't know how to take apart their IIc, IIe, Mac, Lisa, etc. and repair it(Yes, Mac/Lisa came out later, but once certified you received offers to take trainings locally to be updated on the latest hardware. I went to Phoenix and saw the Mac/Lisa and upped the certification before those boxes hit retail.) But I came to Cupertino for a week just like everyone else. I had to troubleshoot the machines, take 'em apart and put them back together just like everyone else. I burnt my fingers on the sodering iron just like everyone else. Bent the pins on the rom the first time I inserted just like everyone else. There were a lot of naysayers, but I had a lot of fun doin that stuff and there were a few who supported me. I worked at the local shop repairing Apples and Osbournes all through jr. high. If I would've met Steve Wozniak at that age I would've wrote him a poem or something just as crazy too. But the support I did receive, and the fact Apple let me earn and take the test fired me up, and now I have a CS degree and work in Silicon Valley living the dream! Word!! If that's what she wants, I hope she gets it!

braindump

[CABAN]

Isn't it obvious?

I got my MCSE when I was 16 in '98

[martis]

But I didn't go to the media or call microsoft or set off fireworks. WIsh I had - probably could have gotten a college scholarship out of it. Anyone else get an mcse that young?

Re:Equal Opportunities - I disagree.

[nibtib]

I think there should be a 10 women to 1 man ration in my work place, being that 1 man is me.

Not that I'm a feminist or anything like that, I just support women, that's all (;

(yeah right)

Put it this way...

[sykjoke]

Any CV that I see that mentions MCP's go straight in the bin where they belong. There negative value, you can remember billy propaganda exams and have -ve real world value.

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[jjoyce]

Gates didn't start donating money until he developed a reputation as an asshole. That isn't kindness, it's public relations without hiring a PR firm.

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[Virtual Karma]

Why is this (parent post) very sensible post modded as Flamebait and all the actually flamebaits preceding it modded as funny? Something is wrong.

I guess you voiced your opinion in a wrong forum where I have observed that people are blindly biased based on no rationale. And yes.. over here its also fashionable to bash Microsoft. These are people who didn't get enough attention and hugs as kids (is there a scientific term for this?)

Her programs...

[drigz]

When she talks about her programs, she mentions:
- A program to sort a list.
- A calculator that can add, subtract, multiply and divide.
- A program that shows the table of a number? Didn't hear that one.

So, while I wouldn't go so far as to call it genius, or really newsworthy, it's still fairly impressive for a 10 year old.

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[bhtooefr]

While she's VERY impressive, a calculator in C# isn't hard at all.

I don't know C#, but I've done one. In C#.

All it takes is VB knowledge, remembering that C# is C-derived, and requires == for comparison, and that you have to put a semicolon on the end of each line.

(oops... I just admitted to knowing VB, didn't I?

I'm much better at Python, though...)

Re:Get them young huh?

[kz45]

Not to incite a flame war or anything, but to me, a 10 year-old kid getting their MS certification somewhat devalues the certification (see, it's so easy that a kid can get it). True, she may be an incredibly gifted child, but pointing and clicking in MS Word is hardly a brain drain.

well, there are 10 year olds that can ace college calculus classes. Does it make it any easier?

SPONGEBOB STAT!

[KC9EOW]

See? That's what happens when a child grows up without Nickelodeon and CartoonNetwork.... Sad thing is, since she's from Pakistan, most likely her father &/or husband won't let her use the certification or even mention it in public after she reaches like, 14....

Re:Get them young huh?

[bhtooefr]

The class was an intro to computers class, and she mentioned Windows 97 when she was discussing operating systems.

I don't recall her having a MWUS...

Still, one should know that there isn't a Windows 97 - that's fairly basic.

faux hero worship

[bersl2]

Yeah, I felt similarly at that age about Gates.

And then, when I grew up, I realized that he was just a businessman in geek's clothing.

It's not about...

[CypherXero]

...what Microsoft says you should do, it's about what the REAL WORLD says you should do. I wouldn't trust her to fix my computer, because she's probably uninstall Firefox and Thunderbird, and make me stick to only Microsoft programs.

See, that's the real test: If she's using Internet Explorer in her free time, she's an idiot. There's no way around it. MCP, MCSE, etc be damned, she's still an idiot if that's true.

Damn!

[Locke2005]

Now I'm going to have to take the MCP exams, just to prove I'm as smart as a 9-year old!

I Can't Comment

[Master of Transhuman]

I'm laughing too hard.

Not to insult the kid who is probably very smart (well, as smart as you need to be to be an MCSE), but we just had a discussion about Microsoft hiring practices here, in which I stated they just want clever puzzle solvers with no real world experience.

And here we go - we have an MCSE with a whole nine years of experience.

If this doesn't symbolize the entire Microsoft culture AND the MS shills and trolls here at /., I don't know what does.

Re:Big deal.

[sgt_doom]

Doesn't offer many opportunities to women!

Dude, that was like the second country on the planet to have a woman president (I believe the first was Israel and the third and fourth were the U.K. and Turkey. Anyone see any women presidents here (and with Hillary going neocon with her comments on pro-life and support of mass offshoring of American tech jobs - I don't see one in the near future).

Re:Big deal.

[sgt_doom]

This entire topic has moved me to compose my own poem to Bill:

Bill, you are wonderful because your mother was a close friend of IBM CEO Akers who gave you the DOS licensing (biggest cash cow in history of mankind);

Bill, you are wonderful because you hired Tim the programmer to copy Gary Kildall's CPM and call it DOS;

Bill, you are wonderful because your uncle was VP of First Interstate Bank which magically gave your company it's financing

Bill, you are just too wonderful.

Isn't that cute, a budding destroyer of innovation

[Locutus]

enough said

LoB

Re:Please... stop while you can....

[Linker3000]

He's OK - he soon gets bored and goes back to the old Vax 11/750 I brought home for him to play with!!!

MCSE - back in the day

[JimmytheGeek]

I supervised an intern who had passed the 4 core NT 4.0 exams with some help from the ExamCram series. I asked him to modify the network settings.

Deer in the headlights look.
"Go into Control Panel."
Deer in the headlights.
"Hit the Start Button, select 'settings' "
Deer in the headlights.
"Start button. Lower left corner of the screen."

I am serious. He turned out to be a bright guy and all, but his certifications were not meaningful. I don't pay any attention to them any more, except possibly as a "clueful enough to understand the labor market"

Re:Get them young huh?

[EasyComputer]

This is what she got

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcad/default .asp

when she grwos up she can master Linux

[peter303]

Linux- the system of discerning adults.

Re:This kills me.

[kz45]

A 9 year old can pass a mickeysoft exam. Their software has a ton of wizards and there are still admins out there who have no f**king clue how to run their windows server boxes.

*sigh*

this can be said about a lot of things. I know people who are graduating this year with a degree in computer science and don't know what an IP address is.

there are also admins that are intelligent that get these certifications because they want to increase their worth in the computer industry.

Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation

[GeffDE]

There's a really good reason you don't know C#. You should pride yourself on it.

Link to the poem

[metomynon]

Here is a link to the poem celebrating Bill Gates' life story.

Exclusive! Poem found!

[GodfatherofSoul]

It's a haiku:

Your evil empire,
Crushing those who oppose you,
Die, filthy penguin!

Re:wrong

[TrappedByMyself]

Study for them? No, more like memorize the answers, downloaded from a website.

Do you feel better now?

Re:Get them young huh?

[vandon]

I've taken(and passed) 3 W2K MCP tests. W2K Prof installing, config, and admin, W2K server installing, config, and admin, and a IE/IEAK test.
They are all about 'what is the default install dir?', 'where do you add and change users?'.
Very few of the questions actually did any problem solving such as 'Your workstation has no network, use this sim to fix it'. I believe the hardest sim was for server and it was 'set up a network printer and share it for the 'accounting' user group to use between 8am and 5pm'

Re:Big deal.

[Reservoir Penguin]

I believe India and Philipines were among the first too. May want to conut 2 Russian Emperessses as well (sp?)

Don't confuse the Doogie Howser cuteness with...

[Sububer]

...the Slashdot reader "evil MS plot" conspiracy theory that should have been posted here already, but for some reason wasn't. Bill says, "To compete with Plan 9's multimedia support, we need to turn young girls in Pakistan into sweat shop programmers." Steve replies, "Graaaghrgh!!", signifying his contrived air of excitement about the idea, but more importantly, his approval. Bill says, "OK - find me a poster girl, and give her one of those certification thingies we make. Oh, and buy Slashdot so that we can put her on there too." Disclaimer: This is a true story.

How is this News for Nerds. Stuff that matters?

[dspisak]

Oh, I see now...future trophy wife down the road. Thanks Slashdot.

"Go make me a CMS framework woman!"

My reaction was

[einhverfr]

It figures. Some of the exams (Windows 2000 Network Infrastructure) seemed like good portions of the tests (like the network diagrams) were designed by 9-year-olds playing with visio.

I stopped mentioning I was an MCSE and an MCSA long ago because I was not impressed with the requirements on the exams (though the IIS 4 exam was pretty good). The LPI exams are much better (I hold the LPIC-2 which I passed in beta).

really?

[uberjoe]

"Old enough to pee is old enough for me!"

You know newborns can pee all by themselves, what exactly are you trying to say? Are you a baby banger?

Re:Big deal.

[sgt_doom]

Philippines' prez came later but you are right on India and Indira Ghandi - I didn't include her as she became a dictator for awhile - which to my mind - erases her time as prez.

Bill and this girl

[magerquark.de]

So this is like the Michael Jackson incident?

I have a poem for BillG too...

[woobieman29]

With apologies to "Super Dave Osborne"

Roses are red,
Bill you're a putz.
I hope before you die,
An elephant steps on your nuts.

Re:Big deal.

[Seumas]

I did something similar way back when. There were startup ANSI screens and I edited one to say "WELCOME TO HELL!!" and blink instead of the "Welcome to...(whatever)" that it originally said.

Two months later, someone did something stupid on one of the machines, causing it to have to be reformatted and reinstalled and I was blamed for "hacking" the computer... because I had the intelligence to edit an ANSI data file one time on one machine and change one word in it...

So dumb... :/

Re:Big deal.

[Seumas]

When I was a kid, you didn't have to write your own pseudo worms or virii. You could just rent a game on floppies from Software Pipeline and install it somewhere.

I can imagine it now...

[RoadWarriorX]

Boss: Johnson, come in here.

Johnson: Yes, boss?

Boss: Your job is being outsourced.

Johnson: Oh no! What will I do?

Boss: Relax, we'll need to train your replacement, so you'll be here a little while. That should give you enough time to get thing settled. Oh. Here she has just arrived. Johnson, meet Arfa Karim Randhawa.

Johnson: [Turning around...] Arfa, good to meet... oh, crap!

Re:Big deal.

[Seumas]

I'd be more impressed if she had acquired one of those linux certifications. Or better, solaris admin and network certifications. Everybody and their brother is an MCSE. Big deal.

Not that solaris certifications are even remotely difficult. Just saying - I've never heard of a ten year old getting one of those, but we hear of another nine or ten year old getting their MCSE almost every month.

And again, that's why I don't see how this is a big deal. She isn't the first kid that young to accomplish this AT ALL. Sarabha Nagar did the same thing and was written about just a few months ago.

Re:Big deal.

[Seumas]

A lot of things might be a big deal to one specific person - that doesn't make it news.

Look at it this way:

+She is not the first kid around that age to get an MCSE or a MCP or any other Microsoft certification.
+She is not the first kid that age to do so from that region of the globe.
+She is not the first kid to do so in the last year.
+She is not the first kid to hang with Bill Gates as a result.

It was a big deal the first time. It was pretty interesting to read about the kid who did this stuff so young and even check out his website where he wrote about all the stuff he had been able to do as a result of his accomplishment. But you know what? That was done with. It was old news. It's over.

Beating every "youngster gets a Microsoft Certification" story to death every month or two is silly. Who was the second man to reach the top of Everest? The third? The fourth? The fifth? Right, who knows - because nobody cares. It was news the first time.

But I guess the reason this is such a big deal is because she's from Pakistan and we all have idiotic preconceptions about what live all over that part of the region is like. The first picture in everyone's head is probably of some poor girl living in an aluminum shack next to her family's herd of goats, caked in dried mud, dodging bullets and carrying buckets of water half a mile from the river to do their laundry by hand in.

I'm sorry, but my entire point (besides this just not being a very interesting story) is that people respond to it with offensively stupid preconieved notions. Like if she didn't become a computer expert at the age of ten, her only other option in life would be washing feet and selling trinkets to tourists on the road. Come on. If this kid was from Canada, nobody would give a crap.

People need to check out some photos of Pakistan. Especially places liek Islamabad. Except for some of the more interesting architecture, I dare you to differentiate it from any other fairly large city. It's not like this kid was sleeping on the floor in a yurt. She's just a normal, inquisitive kid with parents that provide her with plenty of resources. Hell, resources that a lot of kids in America don't have. So don't act like this is some kid from the outback being rescued and brought to America by Kevin Bacon.

I was a certified Apple II Tech at 14

[Umanity]

Way back in 1980 I was only 14 years old. I was considered a wonderkind, was interviewed by Geraldo Rivera when I worked at a computer camp in 1982, was written up in Newspapers and Magazines...

I am not impressed with this Microsoft kid... Nothing to see here... I was 16 when I was an instructor at Computer Camps International,and we were teaching kids 9-13 years old how to program in Basic and Assembly language... What is so great about Microcock certification?

I was quoted in the Stamford Advocate in 1982 as saying "I am not an overachiever, I believe that kids younger than me will be the real wonderkids..."... I was being modest, but my statement was true. I am now 40 years old and I am working with kids who were born when I was working with 6502's and Apple II's.

Michael

meaningless required subject line.

[God of Lemmings]

Doesn't a 9 year old getting an MSCE tell you about something lacking in the MSCE, rather than the inherent creativity of an intelligent child.

Misguided prodigy.

[cocoamix]

It's really sad that an obviously bright kid would waste his time on Microsoft certification.

That's kinda like a musical prodigy that chose to write a 40-minute Polka as his first major work.

The saddest part of all is...

[Hosiah]

The MSCE is the easiest certificate in all of computing, and this girl *still* has knowledge that is vastly superior to the Average American.

What's surprising to me, is that MS has engineers who are *older* than ten.

Re:The saddest part of all is...

[chawly]

I thought that ten was the upper age limit..... Excuse me, I gotta go write a poem.

Re:Big deal.

[Guppy06]

"Two months later,"

Been there. I had a chat with a vice principal because adding a line to autoexec.bat meant I installed some mystery apps on a machine.

Re:Big deal.

[typical]

Uh...Hillary's concern would be not getting elected because she is not centrist enough, not because she isn't liberal enough.

In our electoral system, which stabilizes around two parties, the system comes out to an interesting contest of chicken -- who can be the most centrist.

Why computer programming is easy

[typical]

The only reason we think it's a major accomplishment, though, is we've been fooled into thinking kids can't learn complex things.

Just like deaf people or blind people, children are "crippled" as well. The handicap of a child is that they have no experience. It would be very difficult, for instance, for a child to do new, advanced astronomy work, for instance, or new philosophy work. The astrononmy work requires an understanding of math that simply takes some time to comprehend and grasp, and the philosophy work requires digesting a significant body of work and spending time mulling over the implications.

Basic computer programming, however, is rather unique. It is considered "difficult" because

1) Most people don't know how to do it, and don't have the time to learn it (because they're at work or fixing the sink or whatnot all the time). Kids have a hell of a lot of free time, so this isn't a problem.

2) Most people have built themselves a mental approach for solving problems that is less structured than that necessary for computer programming. They require a significant amount of "relearning". Kids aren't affected by this.

3) It takes a while, in programming, before you can produce "useful" results. Children can enjoy programming just due to the rather more unique (to them) ability to *control* something, to make it do whatever they want. Printing "Sarah rocks" an infinite number of times on a screen really *is* cool to a kid. Plus, it does that ever-so-difficult task of impressing adults that you can do something that they can't.

Programming is simply the task of translation, the art of translating something in human language syntax to computer language syntax. Children pick up additional human languages quite easily.

Being able to write a computer program doesn't require much knowledge other than the structured thought process and the syntax knowledge (sure, experience definitely helps, but it's not a prerequisite to code). Both of those two things come at least as easily to kids as adults. You don't have to have years of math or science to write useful software. I know people who started learning to program and were writing software in, oh, two years...why shouldn't a child be able to do the same, if there are no skills that they must learn first?

Re:Why computer programming is easy

[rjh]

I wasn't learning how to program a computer from David; I was learning how to think about computation.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on the Y-combinator, for instance. It's not just a matter of programming; it's a matter of learning how to think about programs, and one which requires a surprising lot of math. Did I understand every nuance of the lambda calculus? Of course not, and I still don't. But I learned enough to be able to understand a deeply complex mathematical topic.

I agree with you that simple computer programming is something that's not all that difficult, nor should we be all that surprised when kids learn it. Where I disagree with you is in what I see as your implicit statement that kids cannot learn things which "require an understanding of math that simply takes some time to comprehend and grasp".

The time required is much, much less than most people believe. It takes truly excellent teachers in order to do it, but it can be done--and without turning the kid into a nervous burned-out wreck, as happens to many child prodigies.

Re:Why computer programming is easy

[typical]

Where I disagree with you is in what I see as your implicit statement that kids cannot learn things which "require an understanding of math that simply takes some time to comprehend and grasp".

Okay, here is what I'm trying to say. Even fairly basic physics really, really hurts without you knowing calculus. It generally takes several years of math classes to work up to calculus -- I admit that this is not the highest-speed rate that a human could work at, but it does take time to process and to really understand various concepts, since you really want to actually have time to apply them a bit to make things "click" easily. Now, probably if your sole goal was to teach someone the math necessary to do physics work, you pare down the time a bit by eliminating irrelevant knowledge. But unless your sole goal is to take a six-year-old and get him doing advanced astronomy, I do think that it's just going to take some time.

Programming doesn't have the prerequisite knowledge requirements that my examples of astronomy (via physics) and philosophy involve. Computer science has more prerequisites (though still, IMHO, a lighter set than some of the older fields).

I admit that I chose "easy" for my title as a bit of a teaser, whereas what I mean to really say is that it doesn't have many prerequisites.

Re:Why computer programming is easy

[rjh]

Even fairly basic physics really, really hurts without you knowing calculus.

Not really. Physics is the science of making empirically testable statements about nature--that's all. You don't need calculus in order to show gravity pulls objects down at the same speed. You don't need calculus to show how sunlight shows us the earth is round, and what the earth's size is. You don't need calculus to ... etc.

Modern physics as we know it is heavily calculus-based, yes, and for good reason: you use the best tools available for the job, and by the time college students are taking college physics, they overwhelmingly have access to the tool of calculus.

But you can do a lot of really fun and interesting physics without ever touching a calculus textbook. Whenever I go out on a hike with my nephews, we do physics; what can we learn from how a hawk drops on a rabbit? What can we learn from the shape of the moon? What can we learn from...

All of this is physics; some of it is surprisingly sophisticated physics; and none of it requires more than fifth-grade math.

Re:Why computer programming is easy

[typical]

Argh, okay, astrophysics, dammit. Do astrophysics! :-P

Re:Big deal.

[Phroggy]

She's just a normal, inquisitive kid with parents that provide her with plenty of resources. Hell, resources that a lot of kids in America don't have.

And yet we call Pakistan a third-world country, and America a world leader. Yes, it shouldn't be surprising that this girl's accomplishments are possible, but I'm still impressed that she was given the opportunity and support, and it saddens me that so many bright young children are denied the same.

Mea Culpa

[ari_j]

I'm not sure which is the cause and which is the effect anymore, but has anyone noticed that when you fire off a comment really fast without doing a preview or proofread and you have an embarrassing typo in the subject or you spelled someone's name wrong or something like that, it gets modded up?

You want geek chicks?

[typical]

A) stop being insulted by jokes, its why some women piss me off so much, they can't take things at face value they HAVE to see some deep down inner shit or something and get all defensive and stupid about stuff. And his joke was pretty funny! and very hard to take as women "bashing?"

That's hardly a female-specific or even -associated characteristic, in my experience.

B) its DANGLEY bits, women have the jiggly bits, men don't. ours DANGLE.

This is the strongest point in the email.

C) MCP exams don't have much to do with programming, and i dare to say most thigns to do with MS now a days isn't programming. unless its win32 or drivers that is;)

Uh, the girl had written (at least) two apps in C# -- a calculator and a sorting application. Not exactly senior developer material yet, perhaps, but she is most definitely coding.

D) If you were trying to be funny you failed. maybe women just arn't funny? ^_^

I'd say that your item (D) isn't particularly funny either.

O)And from personal experiance i've yet to meet any good women programmers, but then i've met very few good male programmers, most way old, so it might be that there are very few good programmers period. So the simple fact its 80-100% male in CS and ENSC classes at university means i'll probably never get to meet a good female programmer. But then with 60% females at my university you wonder why so few ladies in the sciences.

I do know a few good female coders. There were several at CMU: there was the girl that TA'd my vision class at Carnegie Mellon. She knew her stuff very well. There was the PhD student that TAed my systems class there and taught a recitation. She was good too. There were two female professors that I had, a database prof (Anastassia Ailamaki, don't know much about her research) and a networks prof (Mor Harchol-Balter), both of whom were quite knowledgeable (I believe Mor, at least, has some significant network scheduling research under her belt, though she toned the content of her class down a *lot* in difficulty, and FWIW has written the single best document ever to hand to a student thinking about a PhD). There was another female professor, Jessica Hodgins (whose class I did not take, but heard a good deal about from fellow students) who is decidedly hot shit in the graphics world. And I've seen her research, and it's some seriously amazing-looking stuff (through graphics researchers kinda have it easy to make their research look good). I knew one definite Unix geek girl student at Carnegie Mellon. I am currently writing software in a department that contains a number of competent female programmers.

I agree that, in general, the software development (somewhat) and the computer science (overwhelmingly) fields are male. Also, possibly simply due to the proportions, I have generally found that at the very, *very* tippy-top of areas in CS and programming, the people are male. Finally, I have been very disappointed with some people who have clearly been hired/enrolled because they were female, and simply did not have the fascination necessary with the field to really excel.

I do have some things to say about women that aren't immediately covered in the above:

This may be just because I am male, but my sheerly anecdotal evidence is that women tend to get along with people slightly better. This is nice, even if not directly skill-relevant, when deadlines near and tensions fray.

I think that motherhood is a significant hinderance that women need to deal with -- first simply because of maternity leave, but also because we still have a strong correlation with the classic social structure of women staying home and taking care of kids, and men working in an office. Two-working-parent families hav

not impressed

[andersen_hc]

pfft... im not impressed. i wrote an arkanoid clone in vb when i was 10, through sample code that came with vb. I had friends who could do some assembly too. the difference is that I didnt get any special training or books and I didnt have parents or a countries pr machine making a big hooha about it and boosting my ego. many many more people are capable of the same, but just didnt get the same attention and encouragement in life. is it the The Flynn effect or something else?

Outsourcing to an elementary school

[bobcote]

Not wanting to sound like a bleeding heart liberal, but with the reported child labor abuse in some third world countries I can just picture a bunch of "enterprising business men" going into elementary schools and starting outsourcing companies. "Why yes, all of our techs are MCSEs".

So if that support person sounds really young and he just woke up from naptime you may want to look into who is supporting your computers...

One will have to feel sorry for Nick Burns, your company computer guy. He was hoping to get his MCSE so he could "quit this lousy job"

Re:Are you the pot or the kettle?

[The Original Yama]

Rubbish. All rich people have 'foundations'. It's the ultimate tax dodge. Bill's foundation gives away the most simply because he's the richest. Most of this 'giving' is thinly-veiled advertising and promotion for Microsoft.

How much does Bill give away as a percentage of his total wealth? George Soros gives away about half. I'll bet you that Bill doesn't give nearly that much.

Re:Get them young huh?

[makomk]

Yes, but UCBLogo doesn't have all the fancy features (like multiple turtles, 3D graphics, sound, and ability to create custom dialogs with various controls). It's basically a port of UCBLogo to Windows with various added bits and pieces.

Re:Big deal.

[sgt_doom]

I strongly suggest you read over her last 10 to 20 speeches. Her problem is that she is getting far too "centrist" in today's terminology (i.e., neocon)

Re:Big deal.

[typical]

And the reason she's giving those speeches is because her campaign team has looked at the polls and decided that she doesn't have enough appeal to conservatives. Why do you think she had the sudden and abrupt change? Because her values suddenly made a 180? If you're thinking about running for President, you don't *get* to have ideology -- that gets in the way of the centrist race.