Programming prodigy passes away at 16
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The thread because this is one of the most hateful and ugly threads I've ever seen on HN. A thread like this would be literally unthinkable a year or more ago, and now I'm not even surprised it is here.
The story because it is about the death of a person that could easily be a role model for a large number of young children, but females especially in third world - and other - countries.
Those writing from their comfy first world lives that feel the need to point out how 'privileged' this girl was and belittle her achievements have to stop and think - excellent advice from elsewhere in this thread - before they continue to write.
The internet has a long memory. Being insensitive to the death of any child makes you look ugly, stupid and negative in ways that I find hard to describe.
Whatever your motivation, jealousy, a general misunderstanding of the station of women in many third world countries or any other thing that might have prompted you to write what you wrote here: Let me tell you straight from the heart that I think this girl was everything you in particular should aspire to be.
Smart, articulate, compassionate and gifted. The fact that she may or may not have been a member of a family of some standing in Pakistan does not diminish her achievements.
More often than not those that are born into positions of wealth or with other so called advantages squander their fortunes and end up with less than their parents left them with. That's an all too common story.
This girl took what little life she had and grasped it with both hands, then made the best of it. I hope that when my time comes I'll be able to say I did the same.
Any child driven enough to do all this at a young age would have accomplished much more down the road.
This is one of those negative sum situations where we all loose.
I agree with you on this point a thousand times. What is going on with this community? In general I like HN, but there's a real trend brewing when it comes to gender-related articles. And it's not pretty.
HN regularly churns out some of the most biased, vitriolic and short-sighted commentary when it comes to women that I've ever seen in any online community.
Question is, what can we do to counteract it?
[EDIT: as expected, I'm being downvoted. Good riddance, HN.]
I really don't see that at all. There might be some implied sexism, and perhaps occasionally overt sexism, but it's nothing like what you see on other parts of the Internet. I've seldom read a top-rated comment on HN and thought, "wow, that's really sexist." Sure, they exist at the bottom of the page, but there isn't much we can do about that.
Do you have a discussion in mind that makes you feel that way? I'd like to see an example of what you consider "biased, vitriolic, and short-sighted commentary when it comes to women."
I didn't notice any gender-related comments on this article (I'm late to the party, so maybe I missed some that were higher up earlier), but HN does tend to be a place where people tend to post statements of disagreement far more often than they agree with whatever is posted. I'm certainly guilty of this myself on many (most?) occasions.
To some extent this is good and fosters a spirit of healthy debate, but in this case, it's out of place. This is an extremely sad event, and we don't need to be picking apart this girl's achievements while we should be mourning her passing, whatever her gender may be. Whether or not a Microsoft certification is a fantastic achievement at whatever age, this girl represents all the qualities that we should be encouraging in young people everywhere, and it's horrifying to see people try to diminish that.
It's always a tragedy when a 16 year old dies; it's even more upsetting when they were on such a promising trajectory. We should be sad about this without reservation, not questioning whether her path was provably remarkable enough to be worth talking about.
I always get yelled at by my parents because I do a lot of computer programming instead of studying.
There's minimal encouragement in this society and I've seen parents pushing kids to get into CS because it pays. Environment has lot to do in making a "genius". And maybe that's why we have crappy programmers here, in India, and the deviants are pulled into the stereotype.
Assuming Pakistan is similar to India, this girl programming at such a young age is definitely a great deal. I don't think people in the first world nations understand this.
Even if you were a nine year old girl in Pakistan having written something that people here would recognize as valuable, something like writing a url parsing module in node.js, would you post a comment questioning her achievements? Think back when you were nine, wouldn't you have loved to hear about her? I remember that when I was nine and starting programming, I had heard a terrible hard time grasping simple BASIC programs. I went on to become a fairly capable developer, and event got my share of overblown headlines at 16. Nothing bugs me about a girl getting the same, and being so incredibly much wiser and inspirational than I was. Writing a calculator in C# at 9, studying for an exam that adults take, and then being incredibly intelligent and sensible about it is a big achievement.
There are all these threads about CS education, codeacademy, etc... on here. Well that is what they are all about.
What bothers me even more is people going all free speech when someone is questioning their post. Seriously? In their place, I would start questioning what compelled me to write such a post, and why this story caught my interest so much as to write a comment saying that earning an MCP is not worth mentioning.
HN is going to be the typical IT community: big egos fighting against each other to show off their smartness.
If now a young girl is called a genius, then they can't resist to nitpick, because they feel overlooked in their megalomania, they should deserve this title.
But that doesn't mean we can't understand this drive to discuss the details, fight our little demons, and raise our heads to look at the forest instead of the trees.
This girl, in her short life, accomplished more than many of us ever will. Her loss at this age is tragic, but even more tragic is the loss of what she would have become. We need more people like her.
What did strike me as particularly relevant for HN and the drive to succeed was the following quotation from an earlier article on her life, where the author so kindly informed her that she was no longer the "youngest MCP in the world":
“This is the first time I’ve seen this story. But I must say that I’m really happy to have read it. This is exactly what I had been wishing for ever since I got to bring laurels for my country. I am very glad to see that people are following what I did and have succeeded in beating me. I don’t know whether you’ve heard or not but a boy, named Bilal, from Gujranwala in Pakistan also became a Microsoft Certified Professional at the age of nine. I would say that the other youngsters should follow suit, thereby convincing the people to take us kids seriously. Our generation is very talented and so should be promoted.”[1]
A lot of people are brought here by the will to do Something Great, so much so that we get caught up in whether or not credit is given rightly, whether we'll get it, whether the whole world of doing Great Things is fair (it's not). It was this perspective of humility in the face of eventually being passed up, which is so rare in externally validated precocious children, that I found inspiring.
She had class and a sense of perspective well beyond her years, and which many people fail to achieve over much longer lives.
However I just noticed this quote from her, which is so much more remarkable for a 10-year old:
"If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind," she said. "If you think shy, you act shy. If you think confident you act confident. Therefore never let shyness conquer your mind."
To me that's the amazing part of her story, and something she can teach others about forever.
If you're having trouble speaking well, the solution probably isn't to speak slower, but to learn over time how to speak better at-speed.
I vehemently disagree - some of my most respected people in life pause frequently while speaking, and will directly ask for a moment when questioned about something, to collect their thoughts. I give these people's words incredible weight in my life not just because I respect them as people, but knowing that what they're telling me is well considered instead of knee-jerk.
I think the social expectation of having an answer at the drop of a hat on anything is pretty unfortunate, and makes us all a little bit dumber.
I don't mean in a debate, or even being asked a question. I just mean having a conversation, small talk etc.
It certainly depends on the age and the personality of the receiver.
It's a terrible advice to give to a kid or a teenager, or to someone who is trying to overcome their lack of confidence.
"Think before you give an answer" is a much more sensitive and universal advice.
The biggest tribute you can make to someone's life, like hers, is to take a moment to reflect, heed their advice, and incorporate it into your own. That's the stuff they would most like to see.
Still, she was very intelligent, very sweet and a very caring kid. I met her and also her dad around 2005.
Also, she came from a very humble background and when I met her, her father was travelling with her using public transport (I know this because I did drop her and her father few times).
That having been said, given where she came from, she did few things in her 16 years of life that I know may people cannot. RIP.
Secondly, she didn't belong to elite class at all. Her father is a retired Army officer, which means essentially middle class. She was transferred to a better/elite School only after becoming a celebrity.
Here is one interview which is entirely in English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCUbRsab6iQ&feature=relat...
Sorry but no. Again, I don't want to belittle her accomplishments - it's certainly a feat for any girl or boy her age to be even able to put a very simple application together, but she came from a very wealthy Pakistani family. Saying that she made it to Redmond out of her own ambition and drive is spitting in the face of all her not so privileged compatriots who are struggling to do the same.
EDIT: Actually never mind. This is only going to end up bad. You have your opinion and I have mine.
So let's not try to have a discussion about it? I've never understood that frame of mind.
For what it's worth, I'm getting the same vibe from you. Your first contribution to this thread was basically taking a big steaming dump over this young lady's accomplishments. Why would you do that? It didn't add anything to the discussion, and instead makes you look like a colossal jerk. If this were not HN, I'd think you were just plain trolling.
Yet he/she takes the effort to right that down? I love it when people take part in a discussion, then, when a reply is on it's way they say "let's not discuss this more". If it's not worth discussing why bother dropping such useless statements? Ever considering not enter the discussion in the first place? It's not rocket science.
__For what it's worth, I'm getting the same vibe from you. Your first contribution to this thread was basically taking a big steaming dump over this young lady's accomplishments. Why would you do that? It didn't add anything to the discussion, and instead makes you look like a colossal jerk. If this were not HN, I'd think you were just plain trolling.__ I strongly disagree. andreadallera didn't took 'a big steaming dump' over this young lady's achievements. He/she simply question them. I have no idea if this young lady accomplished much or not, but how is questioning the same as denying?
Because you realized you made a mistake by entering the discussion in the first place. It's like trying to argue evolution with a creationist who you don't know is a creationist when you start talking. You find out, and then you go "Oh man, this is gonna go nowhere fast. I'm off."
>He/she simply question them.
Common fucking decency would imply that a thread discussing the death of someone is not the proper place to question their accomplishments in life.
An MCP at 9 years old is a big deal. I know it might have been easy for some of you geniuses in here, but this girl was 9.
It's a fair objection, though rather emotionally contentious given the context.
This is precisely the point raised above, that this story is primarily about the opportunity provided by the family. But you are right, it's important to note that her family was evidently both wealthy and progressive.
Writing off her accomplishments due to privilege is unfair.
It seems clear that she had emotional intelligence above and beyond analytical. That should be enough.
I feel terrible for her parents. Burying a child has to be the hardest thing in the world.
What a great quote, too. She seemed to have a great outlook. Rest in Peace.
What's most important about her was not her professional certification. When others younger than her got certified, instead of seeing competition, she saw company. Of the grants she received, she donated a computer lab to a girls school. She was very mature and articulate. I may disagree with her tastes in programming languages and operating systems, but I can recognize a great person when I see one.
Pretty close to my motto: "What Would You Do If You Were Not Afraid?".
Taken from "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnsson.
It could be the same things many of us did when we were kids. But you should listen to it; I can't find the right words to tell you how I felt.
A child who can teach us, if we are willing to listen.
Edit: I have some reservations about saying that though; I work with Pakistani designers and programmers, normal people, mostly not even well educated (just a bit) with just enough money to have bought a computer and learn some stuff. And they made products, sites, money just out of nothing like we would do here. So in that regard I have come to know at least some Pakistani as people who, despite their culture, mentors (and general lack there of), peers (and lack there of) and without the press, certification, education and wealthy family who took more or less the same path as 'we' westerners would. There are exceptions to most rules and I would think she would be that.
I have no clue why this is even on hacker news, let alone top story.
(This comment would be categorized as pedantic.)
Meditating on shyness as a kind of fear
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
[1]http://digg.com/newsbar/Technology/lahore_i_t_park_now_named...
If other Pakistani kids are motivated and inspired by her life I think its worth the renaming, adulation etc.
I'm starting to see where you are coming from, but I really think its OK to celebrate this girl's success and recognition.
Someone explain the bile and hatred in this thread to me. I don't get it.
For a 9 year old female in Pakistan? More so.
For a 9 year old female in Pakistan with an outlook on life that is more mature than some 20 year olds?
I'm having trouble coming up with reasons that this wasn't a very big deal.
Frankly speaking i have more respect for that Boy http://launchpad.net/~bilalakhtar than her.At least he can program.
I mean, it the least we can expect from a hacker. Really, it must not be a big deal because it is so common.
Oh, wait, I think it's not :-) And the bashers just think they could have done the same at her age, in a similar situation. But she did, while they think they could have done it.
Ideas are cheap, implementation matter -and she did it. Saying that she has not yet created some major piece of software is acceptable - the article may not have gotten the perfect title. But considering the age at which she died, odds are she would have followed her promising way and done something really good.
But wait- she already managed to have a computer lab set up in her village. Something everyone here must also have done at her age.
Nothing to see - just spoiled brats expressing jealousy.
I started programming when I was 8, I know a lot of people that started meddling around with computer around the same age, and I was born a decade before her which, in computer years, is like a century. Everything programming related was a hundred times more difficult to accomplish than it is now - I wrote assembly on a C64, because that's all my poor family could afford, with nothing more than a printsheet of the opcodes. And no internet, keep that in mind. And I won't say I'm a prodigy because of that.
I am also an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) and I can tell you that the exam was nothing but difficult - basically, it had nothing to do with actual programming and more with knowing what checkbox to flag. I studied for it the evening before the test.
I've seen so many stories like this, most of them not as tragic and not as heartwarming. For example, a heir of a very wealth family that I know has been featured in at least 10 Italian newspapers as "the new Mark Zuckerberg" or "the 20 years-old startupper" or "the genius behind <his startup>", all because his family has deep ties with the editors.
That has taught me never to believe a thing of what I read on something even vaguely institutionalized.
Not that this applies to you, but at what age do people learn empathy and sensitivity?
On a personal level, I am deeply sorry for her death. Given time, she might have become a great programmer.
On a more general level, when I see something like this on the news, I can't help but ask myself why exactly somebody has written an article about this particular person. In this case, it doesn't seem to me that she was the prodigy they're talking about. A smart kid with a will to improve herself? Certainly. But think about the context - she came from a very rich Pakistani family. What would you think, as a 16 year old boy from Pakistan, coming from a poor family and working your bones off to make a living, coding at night, of this story? Because, you know, it's very likely that there's somebody like the boy in question in Pakistan.
Scope mixing is the bane of modern communication. You can't use empathy as an excuse to talk about anything. This personal tragedy should have remained personal, not brought up on the news. Just my humble opinion.
Yes, elitist families have more opportunities than the rest, but counter-intuitively given the feudal elite culture of Pakistan, the rich are often devoid of ambition and simply join family businesses. Girls, especially, are raised with no other ambition than to get married.
I think for this girl to have such greater ambitions, despite the rampant chauvinistic expectations of her society, despite a country where everyone (including the rich) have 5-10 hrs of electricity/gas/water a day, despite living in a country in political upheaval, is pretty exemplary. And her talent, as such, is impressive in context.
andreadallera, here's the author's email address todd@geekwire.com, enjoy petitioning him for your own digital ink noting and praising your deep feelings of self worth -- those being more important than the death of a child.
I remembered getting about 80 emails from potential customers, asking my parents for their credit cards/money in order to acquire some merchandise and a domain name, and them completely freaking out (because of all the "credit cards + internet = FRAUD!" adverts at the time).
So thankful the internet has progressed into what it is now.
Let's see if a similar article is written up about your achievements when you pass away.
Thanks for the insight, though!
Whoa, easy. I have expressed my opinion and I have backed it up well I think. No hate for the poor girl, that's just terrible that somebody 16 years old have to die, no matter his or her accomplishments.
On the other hand, what accomplishments are we talking about here? Seriously, I'm really sorry for the poor girl, I really am, but still I can't see the accomplishment she's made.
And, honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about what people will write about me when I'm dead.
I don't get this angry when commenting here but the disgusting lack of empathy continually expressed on HN really, really gets to me. If you truly felt sorry for the girl, for her family, considered her family's pride for what she accomplished not only for herself but possibly for other kids in Pakistan, then you wouldn't feel the need to point out any of what you've stated.
I read the article and found it quite inspirational that a girl her age had so much motivation. Most kids at the age of 9 are playing their Wii's and watching early-morning reruns of Power Rangers. Her achievements go beyond technical certification.
But it's alright. Let's be champions of truth and justice at the sacrifice of appreciation and empathy. It'd be the hacker thing to do, anyway. It's happened with Dropbox, AirBnB, Steve Jobs, etc, already; so one more added to the list is a drop in the bucket.
Empathy should have nothing to do with your ability to evaluate facts. Empathy has an evil cousin, politically correctness. When politically correctness comes into play, you lose the game. You can't talk about anything with a straight perspective because, you know, somebody might get offended.
A 16 years old kid has died. That is a sad fact by itself. If she was the dumbest kid in Pakistan that wouldn't have made the fact less sad - only, you wouldn't have known it. If she was the poorest kid in Pakistan, same thing. Now, you know that a lot of 16 years old kids die in Pakistan? Most of them with family situations much worse than the one she was in? Do you feel empathy for them? I bet so. That's a good thing, a human thing to feel.
Now, as a thought experiment, let's say she wasn't a Pakistani little girl. Let's say she was a 16 years old boy coming from a rich US family. Even fat and greasy, to add to the image. Let's also add that this one didn't die - he's well off in his NY mansion eating Snickers all day. What would you have thought of the article? "16 years old kid from NY loves messing around with .NET". Wouldn't you have said: who cares? And rightly so?
Empathy drains perspective. Feeling empathy is the noblest thing in the world. At the same time, it doesn't mean that it should suspend your ability to evaluate situations. A big problem with our society and our communication channels is that they routinely employ this effect to steer public opinion where they want it to be. Don't be a sucker - be human, but use your brain.
Frankly, your original post was extremely light on facts. The only relevant fact that you presented is that you think the MCP exam is easy. You wrote:
> the hype is widely unjustified
You really don't have enough information. You're looking at a single fact without context, and saying that it's nothing special. For some context, check out khalidmbajwa's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467046
If a 16-year-old boy from the ghetto in the US became the world's youngest MCP at the age of 9, I would absolutely expect that to be news.
I would also think it was particularly unworldly to comment on the reporting of his untimely death, "well, I, as a white man with excellent access to education, got an MCP at the age of 20, and it wasn't all that hard".
The challenges that Arfa, or your hypothetical ghetto programmer, faced, were entirely different, and quite probably greater to the ones you faced, and they achieved a specific milestone a long time before you did. I genuinely can't imagine the mindset that attempts to minimize rather than celebrating their achievements.
May our paths never cross in real life.
That's not logic. That's jealousy.
How delightfully patronizing.
Your example fails in supporting your point. Your example person could not be more different from Arfa.
Your character: Fat Boy who enjoys messing with .NET is alive and enjoying his snickers bar.
Arfa: Young Intelligent, Motivated Girl Concretely acting in fulfilling her goals and bettering her environment dies at 16.
It does not matter her gender, age or privilege. Her outlook, her willingness to act in perusing her goals and enrichment - in spite of her "silver spoon" - puts her ahead of a lot of people. Do not underestimate the power of taking things for granted.
We agree that her early death is tragic. But is it fair that so many other people also die and no one notices? No it is not fair. I agree. But the reality of the matter is that attention is a scarce resource and will always be. Now, If I had somehow heard about the death of your rich fat kid from NYC then I would certainly feel empathy for the parents and the early loss. But the reality is, a random person hearing of that event is not a likely scenario. Most news outlets would not be interested.
Many people, some more technically accomplished than Arfa will not get similar coverage. But technical accomplishment is not the sole determinant of value as a person or worth in attention units. If you look at how we price people's worth in attention you will notice that it is only loosely correlated with the value of the labor they put into improving themselves and more correlated with how much demand for their attention they can create.
As for Arfa's case she actually does stands up to scrutiny of the worth of her accomplishments. The real loss is not her current skill but the time derivative of it, the rate of increase, her potential. The fact that she had already made news, met Bill Gates, lack of greed, willingness to give back and the inspirational aspect of it all. Those add to make hers a very uncommon situation and hence worth covering by the media.
Her dying is a very sad event as is the case for nearly all deaths. But make no mistake, this coverage is not due to the empathy of the news outlets but a calculated cost value decision. Fair or not that is the reality of it and there is no gain in focusing on how many others are not covered instead giving more weight to the tragic fact of her loss. She has gotten to your ellipsoid of attention. That alone justifies the attention she is receiving, not an accounting of how easy it is to replicate her accomplishments. Such a stance is not much difference from holding a belief that I could make stackoverflow in a week.
Finally I completely disagree that empathy drains perspective. Empathy gives perspective. You underestimate the value of social and emotional intelligence, which are vital in getting people to work together and overcome difficulties. Empathy is exactly trying to get someone's perspective and then using that to your mutual advantages (or manipulate to get ahead). Intelligence in species is correlated with complexity of social groups. Some argue Neanderthals were more IQ intelligent than us - closer to our savants but we overcame them by being more able to work together and having a superior Collective Intelligence.
Empathy is not an enemy of rationality. See Higher order intentionality. I have a pet theory that the empathetic mind is a simulation based intelligence, dual to the calculation based intelligence commonly linked to I.Q. You can run simulations, or run outright calculations to get at the same answer. Some things are easier to calculate others easier to simulate. Both add perspective and neither has ordinality.
Feeling empathy and being sad for whatever reason is ok, but trying to project to other and decline them the right to ask the question or to make a statement in a respectful manner is not.
While I appreciate your proselytizing suggestion that we change our entire moral and ethical framework based on what some random person on the internet wrote in anger and eschew logic and reason, I will bite my tongue whenever I please, thank you very much.
What disgusts me is the lack of tact and consideration of editors and maybe her parents - the first are ready to exploit the death of a 16 years old girl to make some uniques, the seconds (I really hope that's not the case) are ready to put their child on the cover for some advertising.
Worst defense is a bad defense.