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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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 :(

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

[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

[kaellinn18]

What? What's a preview button?

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

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 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?

[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.

and in 3 years.

[wormuniverse]

she will feel like she wasted her life.

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]

... 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

[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: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 :)

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.

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

[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: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. :)

"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: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?

[Anonymous Coward]

>What's going on here?

Calc.exe ?

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

[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:Get them young huh?

[Petersson]

This is not just a kid...

This is the Microsoft Youngling!

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.

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: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.

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!

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??!!

You do realize...

[tkrotchko]

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

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

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.

[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?

Let me get this straight...

[ninja_assault_kitten]

You're comparing writing a symphony to getting your MCSE?

Re:Let me get this straight...

[KanSer]

I've been saying this for years. A 10 year old could do any MCSE's job.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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

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:Get them young huh?

[ArAgost]

you misspelled "Lego".

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?

[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.