9 Year Old Girl Becomes Microsoft Certified "Professional"
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
But instead you're dumping on her because of "Microsoft" in the title? If you're going to dump on someone, dump on Microsoft! And even that is a backhanded insult to her. There are just some very bright 9-year-olds out there.
My cofounder and his wife once took the Diplomatic Service Exam. She had wanted to be a diplomat, he joined for support. They got through the final rounds, and it was far from boring! During their time there, they witnessed some incredible undiplomatic behavior from an actual diplomat in the foreign service, freaking out in the cafeteria line. They were quizzed ineptly on the 'canon' of American literature. Finally, (if I recall correctly) they passed the test. It was, however, useless, because all of the jobs went to Reagan's cronies, instead.
The negative comments here don't come close to capturing how messed up this is.
Kids don't care about super-achievement of credentials. Mostly they just want to know their parents love them and to be like other kids. It's parents who perversely put their children through this, to fill their own ego needs. Your dog show analogy is unfortunately apt.
As for "a path leading out of that mess", the only path I know is growing as a person. What's sad about these manufactured prodigies is that they end up having to do a lot of that the hard way, if they do it at all.
I am projecting my own experience as a child onto her, but when I was her age I heard about Microsoft credentials. I considered trying for them, but my mother's friend told me they were a distraction, and gave me a copy of Turbo C++ instead. I can't remember ever thinking about pleasing my parents. It never entered my conscious thought. I just knew I wanted to learn to program computers, and I couldn't, in that time, be interested in computers as a kid and envision Microsoft's credentials with the disdain that I do now. I suspect it's the same now, in India.
It's true that the only way out of credentialism is growing oneself as a person, and finding a way to develop a self-referent identity. The advantage is that one grows while striving, and one can often find oneself in much better place, with better social support, and deeper values. It's a lot more difficult to see this in the construct of an RPG, or in most public high-schools.
Why just a microsoft certification ? there can be so much more the girl can do with her abilities!! things that are more fruitful, knowledge that is more universal than a microsoft certy!
I read such stories almost every week in India. X kid doing that or this. All crap.
your point: the parents compete using their kids it's right.
We don't see any of these kids in the newspapers when they are grown up. Why? Because these kids aren't born for what they are forced to do. Once they start using their brains, they change and begin to pursue what they want.
The way I look at it, her parents are trying to show her the best path possible and use her skills (memorizing thirukkural when you are 3 is awesome, 1330 couplets ).
It certainly did not turn out so bad in Tiger Wood's case...
I am an American and I was older than this girl, but I don't think you can totally discount the possibility that she just wanted to do it for herself.
I used the then popular story about a 12 year old Pakistani girl who got the same certificate, to dissuade my friend.
And so I encourage all of today's fresh faced and unemployed hackers to think of that 9 year old when the current recession is wearing them down. Do you really think that MCTS will help?
So I learned Perl instead, which honestly helped my career a whole lot more.
I was in kindergarten when people were still using 8088s.
(I am guessing this girl is legitimately bright--you can't blame a 9 year old for not knowing these ugly facts.)
Point taken. Some people actually do stuff like this, though, and I don't think jokes like this should be propagated (or at least unopposed) on HN.
It's not likely she was missing ballet practice and play dates in suburban parks to accomplish this.
Not every programmer needs to be a LISP/EMACS hacker.
We wouldn't have scoffed as much if she mastered a branch of Mathematics instead.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156863
Can't we just congratulate the kid and move on? I mean, vital as it is to teach her that credentials are bullshit, can't we let her turn ten before breaking the bad news? She's already much closer to figuring it out for herself than I was at that age.
Or, instead of showing off her chops, perhaps she'll prefer to quietly rake in the cash as a Windows programmer. It's not like she'd be the only one to make that choice.
But if you want to be more serious about it: Sure, I concede the rebuttal. Gaskin's a very creative programmer. He also works on stuff that I actually care about. I agree that passing a Microsoft certification is not in the same league as the least thing that the guy has done. And I agree that cramming for Microsoft tests is not an especially great activity to encourage a nine-year-old to do.
None of which alters my initial reaction: Congratulate the girl and move on. Just because she's no Gaskin doesn't mean she deserves to be the scapegoat for things that are not her fault (the purported meaninglessness of her prized credential; the bureaucratic, credentialist nature of the Microsoft IT consulting ecosystem; the existence of cram schools and dominating parents; the insecurity of Western IT folks about the rise of the Indian software industry; and the fact that she is nine years old and can't necessarily be expected to understand any of this). She's a living, breathing kid who may be reading this thread right now -- a kid with the potential to become creative and talented, who may already be creative and talented when she's not being paraded in front of news cameras. She's not a hypothetical pawn in our intellectual game.
Even if I used something Microsoft ;-)