Programming Prodigy Arfa Karim Passes Away At 16 536
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."
Re:The first four comments are disgusting. (Score:5, Informative)
I concur. While many of us may not consider being an MCP 'worth' of anything, it's still something above and beyond what those arseholes who posted above could ever achieve, even at 39 rather than 9 (yes, thats how old she was when she got MCP), she even got certified to FLY at age 10.
This is someone who was gifted at something. Yes, I'd call myself jealous of her talent, but that's no excuse to bad mouth anyone. Dead or not.
Re:Why... (Score:5, Informative)
she was featured on slashdot years ago when she got the certification:
http://slashdot.org/story/05/07/15/0651245/microsofts-10-year-old-certified-professional [slashdot.org]
it's a sad fact so many assholes have basically the same comments that were said back then... I wonder if they just copy and paste?
Re:Certified Microsoft Professional (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously? Getting certified at age 9 does not qualify enough to be appreciated? You cannot even spell "were" and "a lot" at this age and you're pointing fingers at a dead legend?
Epilepsy can be fatal (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The first four comments are disgusting. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a tragic loss (Score:5, Informative)
Epilepsy in it self is non-fatal. There are acute secondary dangers from epileptic seizures (falls, traffic accidents) and also some medical dangers (hypoxia from suspended breathing, heart problems).
But primarily, epileptic seizures is a hint that something is _very_ wrong in the central nervous systems on a low level. There exists a large number of things known to trigger attacks, such as infections, brain injury, drugs, withdrawal from drugs and so on. What you want to do is typically to treat the underlying problem. People don't die of the epileptic attack, it's the underlying problem that kills them (or the secondary dangers).
Oh, by the way, ruptured aneurysm have a surprisingly good prognosis, as long as you get to a hospital in time. If you are a risk group for ruptured aneurysm you really should learn the symptoms and inform your relatives about them as well. This is one of those cases where 2-3 hours makes the difference between "full recovery" and "vegetable".
Re:Certified Microsoft Professional (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The candle ... NO (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Certified Microsoft Professional (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Certified Microsoft Professional (Score:5, Informative)
It also depends on the test. MCP by itself is kind of a meaningless certification as it simply means that you have passed one of the many tests, and not all of them even have to do with programming - e.g. there are some Office certifications that'll give you that.
She, on the other hand, qualified by taking a C# WinForms exam [devx.com]. Also according to the same, she passed an exam for ASP.NET two years later - judging by this, she was on her track to become an MCAD (MS certified app developer), with only one exam remaining. I went through that myself, albeit at an older age (started in 14, got my MCAD by 16) - it's not exactly hard, but it does require that you know how to code, and know C# reasonably well. Doing it at 9 is certainly quite impressive - heck, back at tat age I was still trying to figure out how to write Tetris in Turbo BASIC, without much success at that.
And not to forget that she was born and raised in Pakistan, which is not exactly a first world country - so it's not like she had many opportunities and lots of free time to waste.
Re:Reading the early comments... (Score:2, Informative)
I've noticed that happening a lot lately, comments that aren't snarky, off topic or even wrong being modded down because some fanboy doesn't like it.