Five-year-old passes Microsoft exam
bbc.com
bbc.com
I hope his father continues to foster a life long love of learning and does not get get hung up on the whole 'prodigy' narrative. In college there was a 12 year old girl in my physics class who was miserable. She had an eidetic memory and could regurgitate any fact or formula, but she was deeply unhappy with her life and the path (and expectations!) her parent put on her. I wouldn't want that for any kid.
My parents, and all their adult friends were convinced I was going to be the "Brazillian Bill Gates" (I think mostly because I was the only person interested in computers at that time in their social circle...)
Now I am 26, unemployed, and desperately looking for a coding job... Now everyone is interested in computers, everyone is a gamer too (when I was a kid when I said I played computer games people looked at me like if I was an alien), and I did not even entered a CS course, so I am just a regular jobless coder.
It is making me very, very desperate to not fall into depression, specially when I compare my life now and my life as a kid, and realize that my life is essentially stagnant since I was 16, the same things I had while 16, is what I have now, except health (that now is worse).
/r/programming would probably be a good jumping off point.
My problem now is that the startup where I am working ran out of money, and I have no money (I don't own a car, house, or even a decent cellphone! I am using a borrowed dumbphone right now).
I sent hundreds of resumes, but companies don't even invite me to interview.
This might help some, dudu. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8394490
Instead of 'I ran out of money and will have to move back soon', which reads a little negative, try 'Thanks! I live in São Paulo right now, but I'm willing to move anywhere in Brazil for an opportunity, though my funds are a bit low so traveling will be tough. I'll send you an email/my email is in my profile'
From what I've gathered about the programming industry, its a lot of "show us what you have done" rather than I have a degree in X(although its beneficial for companies who insist on degrees.)
Is there a single thing you would change in your past that you think could have contributed to you having a better future?
Do you think that posing great expectations in a child is a bad way to prepare him for the future?
Do you think someone else can learn something from your experiences? Can you give any advice to take away?
What happened when you where 16? How you stagnated? Could you have escaped from that situation? Is the problem about you or it stems from your environment and social circumstances?
Sorry for the many questions, just curious to know whether someone can learn an important lesson from such a difficult and sorry experience, wish you the best.
One, I never made friends, my father is anti-social himself, and as a Christian family in a age were people socialize getting drunk, I never learned how to do that.
Most jobs today are NOT posted on internet or classifieds, instead they are advertised to chains of friends of the job poster.
Also as Startup owner, my startup make games, and most game startups that had any success, it was because they had important connections (usually with the media, example: Braid, that the author was a journalist, or Minecraft, where journalists used to play online games with him, non-game example: Bill Gates could sell stuff to IBM because his mother asked a friend of hers in IBM board to invite Bill Gates over to see his software).
Mistake two: My parents and their very high expectations were highly annoying, making me hate school in general (in fact, I think mandatory schooling is a problem in general, but nevermind now), but also they never taught me to... work.
Like I wrote in my post, I could ace any test without any effort. Now that I get into real world jobs, stuff are nothing like tests, you MUST work to get stuff done, and to me that is very hard, it requires enormous amounts of mental effort to pay attention and do what must be done.
And what happened when I was 16? Nothing in special, the problem is that I am 26, and I am not one step closer to creating my family than I was when I was 16, I still have no friends, no job, no money, no house, no car, nothing, the only thing "new" on me ever since is my college education, that for now at least is proving to be absolutely useless.
As for the no job and no money, I've been there and it surely sucks. Even if it's not your thing, look into being a VA (tipo assistente virtual) cause there will be people in the US/Europe who'll want to pay ever-so-slightly less per hour for someone to do their admin work, fill databases, whatever. This is what I do while I develop my own project and it pays the bills + a little extra.
For housing, if your family is a "traditional" Brazilian one, I suppose you live with them still, but when you get enough $$ to even share a room with someone else, use OLX, etc and go to the universities to see housing postings (I know USP has them). For a car, SP is already car-hell, but I know the metro/bus isn't all that pleasant either, though you've got some BRT lines and non-peak hours you can certainly use the metro for.
Baby steps, the trick is never to quit.
Also, http://www.zdnet.com/top-tech-firms-scout-for-talent-in-braz...
It is not worry, it is despair.
I find myself thinking about this an awful lot as I raise my first child.
I've never encountered anything on the level of a 12 year in college physics, but I did spend some time with kids who had clearly been reared with such things in mind to much the same effect.
In general I'd caution parents to recognize that children are people, not personal projects or possessions.
For example let's take someone that is a local judge. She/he is "high achieving" enough to go to law school and be elected or appointed a judge. But they want their child to become a federal judge. Or perhaps the judge went to Temple Law but wants his child to go to Penn Law.
Maybe the local judge (or small businessman) is only "small potatoes" (in their mind) because of something that prevented them from ever "going farther" with their career. Or a health problem or a family obligation. And so on. So they would like to see their child to become, say "a big business person running a major corporation" instead of just a small local merchant or someone with a warehouse in the local industrial park.
I happen to know of a person that is a district attorney in a major city on the east coast. Their mother tried and failed to win a local political office. She was an attorney. Father owned a chain of stores in malls. Both parents were very high achieving (live in the best neighborhood in the suburbs) but by all metrics 2 of 3 three children have done much better. And there is no doubt (from person knowledge) they live vicariously through these children.
In those communities what others think in the community is very important.
As a result parents like nothing more than to "elevate" themselves by bragging about what their child has done.
So for example someone can truly want their child to do "better than they did" but also separately want to be able to have bragging rights to their friends and neighbors that "my child just graduated from Harvard". To me these are two separate motivations.
Elevation is a very important concept I have found that explains why, for example, even though I don't care if someone is clerking for SCOTUS (you might of course) that I will gladly tell that fact to someone else in order to impress them. "Oh we went to dinner with Jane's she's clerking for Scalia". (Actually I do care I think it's impressive but I'm trying to illustrate a point here).
My perspective is based btw on growing up in an immigrant family and what I have observed.
Results are published, and colleges then make their decisions based on the results of those test. If you don't outperform your peers, your pathway to a good career will get significantly more complicated.
Masaru Ibuka (a startup founder himself) has written a book "Kindergarten is too late" where he explores the idea of tying learning to a creative and exploratory urge that exists in every kid (but most commonly is expected to channel through games, not education).
I totally agree, I had a mate who was brilliant in mathematics, skipped two grades in secondary school and was in my class. Although he was great in school, he struggled when it came to being social with people 2/3 years older than him.He was unhappy and always struggled to maintain friendships.
I now face the same problem with my son, who seems to fit better with kids that are a couple of years older than him. It seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Talking about prodigy and being special sure does not help, but regardless of what the language used to frame the situation, a kid still has to go to a class sand socialize somewhere.
I especially liked the quote from his mom at the end: "I'm very happy and very proud, I don't want to see him set a world record every day. But I want him to do his best whatever he does in his life," she said.
It may sound subtle, but there's a world of difference between pressure to be the best and pressure to do your best.
I learned to program for my own enjoyment around the age of 7, and I don't think it's done me any particular harm. I was not a social kid, but if I hadn't been programming, I'd have found some other way to avoid human contact.
No ragrets! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DnKNClu2XM
"Ayan says he hopes to launch a UK-based IT hub similar to
America's Silicon Valley one day, which he intends to call
E-Valley.
He also wants to start his own company."
Lost interest on the astronaut part but if I really wanted to I guess I could purchase a seat with Virgin.
Let kids be kids and don't try to make them adults early, it usually doesn't turn out to be as glorified as the adults think it will.
Pre-computers, the other kids already couldn't handle my vocabulary and my tendency to question the logic of their decisions. The effect I had on adults and authority figures was even worse and they reacted by constantly putting me into the slow classes in the hope that this would make me conform.
#$%@ that! There was not going to be a normal childhood for me. I wasn't "normal."
Computers gave me purpose. I spent all that time in the slow classes designing games and coming up with lists of likely user IDs and passwords. And much later in life when my dead-end doctoral career came crashing down around me, they tripled my salary in a day.
I say give the kid some toys, make sure he learns the importance of exercise and diet as he matures, and he'll be fine. Who needs normal?
Being a geek is only isolating if you can't find a strong community of other geeks (of all ages) and you're thrown into the typical prison-factory-like school system. Around here we have plenty of geek families, and they're disproportionately likely to go to unconventional schools or build their own educations piecemeal.
It will be wonderful when we can bring this kind of education to everyone and make it "normal". But I'm not about to wait around for that.
At least in the US, it involves an orchestrated pre-arranged "play date" with parents A, B, and C driving to parent D's house in order to have a planned playing experience with D's kids' toys for 2 hours and 30 minutes, while parents themselves are trying to maintain conversation flow that's centered around discussion topics that all present individuals (hopefully) share.
I was pretty sharp with computers and math when I was that age, or a bit older. I wasn't passing certification tests (there probably weren't any Microsoft ones at the time) but I was programming in BASIC and modifying games that we played in the classroom and jumping ahead on my math. My peers were supportive. At around the age of 12 I changed schools and suddenly being smart was bad just because it was a different group of children with different attitudes.
Kids shouldn't be pushed too much but they also shouldn't be held back just because you think it will make them an outcast. That attitude is far more damaging.
My point was that parents should have in mind that when they send their kids off to college at the age of 12, or in this case let them take tests that are suited for 22 years olds they are likely doing more harm then good. Often parents get excited by the fuzzy feel of my kid is a genius, but forget what damage they are really doing.
But taking a test? That's not even remotely similar. In that case, the damage comes not from a strange environment or lack of peers, but simply from a conformist attitude that comes from people saying this stuff shouldn't be done. It's self-fulfilling.
The real problem is that "I am a genius" is seen as being automatically anti-social. "Smarter" is seen as "better" and that separates them. Ultimately it comes back to the conformist attitude I'm arguing against. That is the problem. Get rid of that, make it acceptable to be different, and passing a test won't matter.
Encouraging kids to be smart and do smart things? Go for it.
Labeling them as smart? Sure, as long as you don't forget to teach them a healthy dose of humility.
Constantly labeling them as smarter? Uh oh... did I mention humility yet?
Making them pass tests to validate that they're smart? Kids don't need or want that; the parents do. It's a recipe to set their kid's life ablaze until young adulthood -- or later.
What if we held the attitude that "smarter" was just another aspect of the genetic lottery, like your height or the color of your skin? What if we taught our children that it doesn't matter what you are, it matters what you do?
Why should telling a child that they're "smart" be any worse than telling them that they're "tall"?
The problem isn't labeling them as smart, the problem is the pervasive attitude that smart can be a substitute for other things like hard work or kindness, and the attitude that a child who's too smart is somehow no longer compatible with his peers.
Why shouldn't a child genius both pursue extreme mental enrichment and participate in life as a peer with other children of his own age? There's nothing that inherently separates prodigies from their peers. We make it happen.
Put another way - if I can find you a five year old ranked 1200 on the ELO system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_rating_system) (the equivalent of "Basic Competence" in chess) - does that say more about the ELO system, or the five year old?
What I am suggesting is that companies (who may or may not know the value of particular "certifications") stop putting so much emphasis on them. The fact that a 5 year old has now set the bar for the MCP, highlights that very issue.
I put more value on 1-5 years of work experience than I do on the MCP.
It's likely that this five-year-old would not be able to perform effectively in the professional capacity that this test is supposed to be for. Whereas a five-year-old with a 1200 ELO score is guaranteed to have basic competence at playing real chess.
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/scholastic-chess/benjamin-ha...
If I tell you that a five year old ran a marathon, that's one impressive five year old.
If I tell you that I organize a whacky foot race every summer and that a five year old finished it last year, my whacky foot race is probably not very challenging.
A priori, I don't really know how hard Microsoft certficiation is, and I don't know how talented this five year old is. But reading the article tells me that he is probably quite talented, and that Microsoft certification is probably not that challenging.
I can't get the thought of Microsoft's certification exams having some wacky foot race component now, and damn would I love to do that.
They're mostly based on memorizing dialogs, messages and arcane rules, with little space for (domain) reasoning. This can be argued of many types of exams of course, but this type of certifications are much more based on this type of "knowledge". In addition to that, preparation for this exams can be cheated by finding (widespread) packages/books which include the exact questions one will find.
Any person which doesn't understand anything about computers but have a good memory, will pass it.
Of course, it's notable that a child has such capacity, but given the nature of the test, it's nothing noteworthy.
Good for him regardless.
His point is not borne out by one data point.
Maybe I'm just cynical but this made me think that the boy simply memorized the questions on the some of the previous tests that have been posted on the Internet ("dumps").
My first experiences were looking up basic problems online, then memorizing them enough so that if the problem happened again I could fix it. Eventually I wanted to dig more into the actual problem, and just like that I was hooked!
So yeah, it might be a problem but hopefully it'll lead to something productive and if the kid actually enjoys it I can't see the harm.
I was doing generally nerdy things at 5 but I fear this kid will outpace himself in a way that will lead to sadness and isolation.
Tech parents of HN, do you think this will help or hurt this young man in the long run?
I certainly don't think publicity is a good idea. That just puts a weird skew and makes it hard to manage expectations for later life.
We don't have any information on the factors that actually matter.
If he is intrinsically motivated to do what he's done, and not just doing it to please his parents, he will be fine. As long as he's free to move onto something new when/if the excitement wanes, it's all just good learning experience.
This is one reason it's important that parents praise "doing" over "being". If you keep telling your kid "You're so good at computers", that becomes part of their identity, and it's constraining, and it creates dangerous assumptions that ability is fixed and innate.
If instead we praise activity and persistence, the child feels free to switch topics, and learns to view ability as the product of practice.
Really though, there's almost no context so it's hard to tell either way.
You mean puberty?
Perhaps we will see some very fine art of work in the foreseeable future. Time will tell.Perfect typo