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Programming Prodigy Arfa Karim Passes Away At 16
quantr writes "Arfa Karim, child prodigy, youngest certified Microsoft Professional in the world and winner of the president’s Pride of Performance, breathed her last breath on Saturday night at the Combined Military Hospital in Lahore. Arfa had an epileptic attack on December 22 and had been in a coma since."
...it must be asshole day at /.
Seriously, folks - what the hell is wrong with you?
A young woman of tremendous promise and an incredibly positive outlook on life dies far before her time, and this is what you have to say?
Some really sick folks. First time in a long time that I've actually been embarrassed of the folks here at /., despite some seriously differing opinions.
Check your premises.
Have gnu, will travel.
Wow, what a bunch of badasses we have here. Way to slam a dead teenager for not being as cool as you think you are. Real men, you are.
There, fixed that for you.
Well at the basic level Certified just means you can pass the test.
Do you know how old she was when she passed it? She was 9.
You may not be impressed by that fact, but I am.
Perhaps, but I don't make a habit of pissing in open graves before the dirt's even shoveled in.
And I find it reprehensible when others do it out of some sort of misbegotten patriotism, envy or need to prop them selves up by being vile to others.
Especially in the case when such potential for brilliance is snuffed out so early.
Check your premises.
Well at the basic level Certified just means you can pass the test.
Do you know how old she was when she passed it? She was 9.
You may not be impressed by that fact, but I am.
The tragedy is that she was a young girl in the prime of life and seeing her life taken too soon, not because she was labeled a Microsoft Certified recipient and thus labeled a child prodigy for doing so.
It's pretty special that you consider the phrase "not as gifted as Mozart" to be synonymous with "not impressive". I hope your kids grow up to be Oscar-winning astronaut quarterbacks, or else you're in for quite a disappointment.
Lack of empathy is a clear social dysfunction and the only excuse is adolescence.
I would not ridicule a 16yo for not understanding how others might feel or how things are for someone else. If you are still busy finding your own identity it is difficult to feel for others. But if you're 20+ and still posting things like the above comments, you are on the way of becoming a pathetic loser.
A new word for your vocabulary is here.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
Being familiar with this girls story, I came here to say some kind words. I see that they have already been said.
For those of you with unkind words all I can say is I have been on Slashdot since 1997 and I have never been so embarrassed and ashamed to call myself a part of this community.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Here are the reasons why this is a news-worthy item here on Slashdot and why she should be credited for what she did:
1. The girl was from Pakistan and therefore unlikely to have been afforded similar social & educational privileges than a 16-year old girl in the USA or Europe.
2. Pakistan is a mainly Muslim country meaning that women have a lower status than men from the moment of birth. Therefore what she did was that little bit more harder for her than for a boy in Pakistan.
3. It's good to occasionally get a new story from Pakistan where everyone isn't portrayed as either a Taliban terrorist in the mountains or a member of the Pakistan government hiding them.
4. Maybe if a few more kids in our rich Western countries (I'm in the UK) took an interest in intellectual pursuits like programming, we wouldn't have so many of them dropping unwanted kids or getting addicted to drugs or alcohol. Maybe just one or two of those kids will read this story and take some inspiration from it, possibly change their own lives.
So now kindly shut the fuck up if you cannot show some compassion.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
I so wish I had mod points right now to mod this one up. You hit the nail on the head.
This is a very unusual story. It's basically a rare human interest story on Slashdot.
This girl wasn't at all important in the computing industry and she didn't invent anything. It's not like Ritchie or Jobs dying last year.
But it shows how inept people here can be when they write crap going "oh she wasn't that clever"...well so what? The normal thing to do is just not to post if you can't find anything nice to say.
To post impolitely on a story like this just shows bad judgement and a lack of maturity.
I had an uncle who was studing CS, so by age 2 I was writing my first Hello World program in BASIC.
Sorry, I don't believe you.
At two years old, you didn't have the motor skill to control a keyboard or a mouse, much less read or write.
She is called a programming prodigy but no evidence is given, the only "evidence" is a MS certification on a site where MS certification is a gigantic red flag. Certification in general tends not to be popular and the ones from MS are often considered to have less value then the paper they were written upon if the paper was made of shit.
The article writer probably knows this and also knows that controversy sells ad impressions.
The simple fact is that a young person died who had some minor accomplishments that most on /, simply do not value since they know adults with the same who are the waste of IT. Maybe if the article poster had given some examples of actual code she had written? Something that would actually impress other developers? But the only links I seen so far are to software that is frankly not that impressive to people from a generation that had to create their own computer from scratch. Don't forget, there are REAL rocket scientists on Slashdot. People that built their own home computer before there were home computers are supposed to be all impressed with a kid that made a calculator in a modern development environment? Not even a very good calculator.
It might be hard for a 9 year old to do that particular exam but so what? Coders judge other coders on code, not certificates.
All this is to me is a young person who died who seems to have gotten some minor press attention for an achievement I do not value. Show me her 3D engine, new sorting algorithm, something that makes her a true child prodigy and not just a very boring kid who read a training manual cover to cover.
Sad she died, but millions die each day. What makes her worthy of special attention? I just don't like fake emotion from people who shed tears over this but never made a donation to stop people from dying or to cure a disease. Slashdot doesn't need human interest stories.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.