At age nine, Arfa Randhawa from Faisalabad, Pakistan, became the youngest person ever to pass a Microsoft certification exam in programming (via Slashdot):
Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn’t hire people her age…She has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language… 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… she passed the required exams….
“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… he first noticed something unusual when she started displaying a remarkable memory, perhaps photographic, at a young age…
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. [Link]
BillG evinced some curiosity:
… he asked her at what age Muslim women start wearing the “Hijab”… Arfa… extended an invitation to him to visit… The Microsoft chief reportedly accepted the invitation and said that he would visit Pakistan in the near future. [Link]
Arfa says she wants to build satellites or software. She has stiff competition in Mridul Seth of Bangalore, who at age eight became the youngest to pass the Microsoft system admin exam.
great…more child labor 🙂
What a kutie pie. My most significant technical achievement at 10 was almost beating Pitfall.
Move over, Mridul, the girls are back in town!
Yessssss!
is “you go girl” too 1990s?
Great, it seems like our kids in South Asia are just plain bored, shouldn’t they be out there trying to do something besides computing?
Or has the MSCE standard dropped so low that even a kid can pass it?
Hmmm …
i wonder if she’s been asked to apologize yet for the bombings in london.
[Admin: he’s making a sarcastic point, criticizing people who wrongly try and pin the sins of fringe groups upon the majority. Don’t get your chuddies twisted.]
Good work lil one ! Now, hopefully this should inspire some of her friends and country mates, as well!
Coding-schmoding!
Can she spell?
he first noticed something unusual when she started displaying a remarkable memory Prof Tinku Varadarajan would have probably said….ahhh…what the hell… it is just rote memorization Irene* :What has to be noted is the skill..once she can memorize, she can go on to win spelling bee(for starters)…but more important thing is..is she interested ?
memorization aptitude is positively correlated with other cognitive skills.
Hello I wonder do you refer Indian Hindus as Gujrat Terrorists or as Babri Mosque destructor in Media?or if you go out of India are you asked to apologize to kill several muslims in your so called SECULAR country?
Adnan, that was precisely Saurav’s (satirical) point.
Saurav, you’re on fire today. Manish, you must have a degree in linguistics in intrepreting Adnan’s chopped angrezi. I was checking out some tech message board where some geeks were arguing whether her certification was impressive or not or whether Gates & Co. had watered down their standards. And ofcourse someone did mention how at least she’s not bombing subways. Also, wanted to mention how cool it is that’s she genuinely interested in this stuff, not being slave-driven by her parents like those spelling bee zombies. I love the bee but no one should be reading the dictionary at age 8.
but no one should be reading the dictionary at age 8. huh!
“that was precisely Saurav’s (satirical) point”
One gets a little weary reading Saurav’s “satire” on a perfectly non-controversial subject. He’s a mindless automaton that rakes the same shit up on EVERY F***ING thread. Spare us, dude.
Anyway, more power to this little kid.
Brown: What about the one who does not get little weary and who does want to be spared? I mean..what about the people on the other side of the aisle ?
I love you too.
He’s a mindless automaton that rakes the same shit up on EVERY F***ING thread. Spare us, dude.
Speaking of cliches and mindless things, your email address is: sandnihga@brown.com
…he asked her at what age Muslim women start wearing the “Hijab”
Wonder what the psychology is behind that question, it’s kind of low-brow and sexually-ambiguous, among other things…
“I love you too.”
Awww, Saurav, I’m touched 😉
Santhosh Daniel, ummmm, point taken. I’ve changed my email address just for ya.
In seriousness, do you have constructive advice for me? I’m actually open to hearing it (i.e. you comment too much; you comment too much about particular things; you don’t engage people enough; etc.). I’m willing to try to change things that are bothering people (b/c I assume if it’s bothering you, it bothers other people as well), but it would be helfpul to know specifically what they are. You can e-mail me offline if you don’t want to continue this here (it seems kind of weird) or whatever you prefer. sauravsarkar2000 A-T yahoo dot com
sd, he was probably curious and lacks social grace. what do you mean by “sexually ambiguous”?
I was qouting the following
“Faisalabad, Pakistan, the ancestral home of one of the London bombers, has a happier event to be….”
when i made my post,i didn
t refer what others said,i was just wondering that is it indian tradition to refer someone?oh and by the way,take my comments as satire too-speaking of MS certification standards,i would just say that few years back two sisters from Pakistan eearned IBM java certification at age of 14, you may google or read here
1)http://www.go4i.net/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=179
2)http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread15100.html
-adnan
I was going to say the Faisalabad connection is newsworthy, but it seems the ‘hood is the third largest city in Pakistan after Karachi and Lahore.
So you’re right, it’s not very newsworthy. That’s what I get for ripping the lede from a story in the Western press 🙂
Automaton!? Ha!
Yo, yo Mr. sAnD nIhGa, ever try reading through his posts? Or are you too busy acting hard at desi parties while crooning 50 Cent songs?
(“I’ll take you to the can-dy shop….”)
Microsoft Certified Professional? Pshaw, t’aint nothing. She should try being an Oracle DBA!
[disclaimer: I have no idea what the hell I am talking about]
[for once]
“Mindless” is one of the last adjectives one could use in describing Saurav. Why don’t you go back over to the desiparty site, dude?
Santhosh Daniel, ummmm, point taken.
Ummmm, well, make sure you stick that point where it belongs… Seriously, though, what’s with the “sandnigga”-thing?
sd, he was probably curious and lacks social grace. what do you mean by “sexually ambiguous”?
Well, it seemed odd, maybe inappropriate because he’s asking a somewhat personal question that I don’t see him asking a boy of that age. It’s not quite on par with his usual cultural savvy, I suppose I got to wondering whether he was just curious or just paying too much attention to her physical appearance…
vurdlife, where the hell have you been? there were a couple of threads back there that needed you.
Why do desi’s always celebrate genius and intelligence so much? Why cant you celebrate stupidity and idiots for a change? Why is it always about ten year old computer Enisteins and six year olds who know how to spell Sajkajamopoolanadisxolsosnsk and know what it means too?
Why cant you celebrate the morons in our midst? What do you have against imbeciles? Why cant you write posts and show some pride in the remedial buffoons in our society? Surely we should be proud of them too?
Like, for instance, I have a cousin who was watching a quiz show and the question was ‘What is the Capital of Germany?’ and he answered ‘G’
I also have an aunty who is really thick too! The things she does are so stupid! But you dont write posts about them, do you?
Why are you marginalising our idiots!
probably because we all have an aunty like that? it’s not newsworthy 😉
is it just me or are there an awful lot of crazed desi parents who try to get their kids to be geniuses at chess, tennis, spelling, etc. ???
which i guess is fine…but microsoft coding?
what’s next? a desi double dutch champion at the age 5?
Have you seen the movie ‘The Royal Tennenbaums’? its like that.
is it just me or are there an awful lot of crazed desi parents who try to get their kids to be geniuses at chess, tennis, spelling, etc. ???
It sounds like this little girl wasn’t victim to crazy parents. The rest of the crazy parents are simply competing for bragging rights. We all know this.
Fk Those Indians Fker all they do is take our jobs.
Go Home BiTch
arfa is unbelieveable.