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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."
Dark humor is a coping mechanism for dealing with the nasty, brutish, and short nature of life. I understand this because I've lost somebody close to me.
Dostoevsky understands this too, because he lost his beloved youngest son to epilepsy, and if you've read his work it's not about unicorns shitting rainbows and roses.
Finally, a joke - what do you do when an epileptic falls into your swimming pool? Throw in some detergent and your dirty laundry.
A moment of silence for a bright little star winking out, no more to lend its brilliance to our future.
To think that a [presumed] Muslim female, a child at that, could accomplish what she did is amazing on so many levels. I am with others on the presumption that her ability was possibly also part of her undoing. The brain is a tricky thing. Hers was likely wired in such a way that it contributed to its burning itself out.
That said, those woman-oppressing Islamic fundamentalists out there can look upon her with all the anger they like. They can't deny what she was. She was female. She was extremely young. She was extremely accomplished and had extremely high potential. I doubt this is the type of symbol she would have wanted to be, but she is definitely a symbol of defiance against ridiculous religious ideals which seek to limit and oppress women into specific roles in life.
Get a grip, folks.
I'm not a programmer, but I am pretty good at my chosen profession. I know without a doubt that I couldn't have passed any sort of "certification" exam at that age, whether it was related to my profession or not.
I'm pretty sure I've got a grip.
Just sayin'.
Modded you down personally as "overrated" on said Firefox post, I still remember that I thought that your writing made it clear that you lack the technical skills to judge what you wrote about. I still remember that I wanted to write an answer to your post, but that would've undone all my previous moderation. What you posted *was* highly overrated, IMHO, so I rather modded you down instead of correcting you. Not everybody is out there to get you. You seem to be pretty vocal, though, looks like it's pretty easy to get annoyed by your posts. Don't take that as an offence, just as an outside observation.