Programming prodigy passes away at 16 • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#121

Post by mcl » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 9:59 AM UTC

reason wrote: post #28

andreadallera wrote: post #12

I hate to write this, since the tragic happening but really, the hype is widely unjustified. 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,…

Jesus, every damn time someone of note passes away we get a bunch of morons on here telling us how the accomplishments aren't as good as they seem. You people need to learn when to bite your tongues. I'm willing to bet if it were some VC going on and on about his/her life's works, the last thing you'd do is point out how unremarkable and unimpressive any of it is. Let's see if a similar article is written up about yo…

Reason is right. Andreadallera are you telling us that a parent is not supposed to lobby for his/her own child? Which father wouldn't use his connections to showcase their children's talent? You certainly managed to slip in your own prodigious talents in your comment. Do you know what youve done? You've used somebody's tragedy to feel good about yourself.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#122

Post by abbasmehdi » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 10:21 AM UTC

andreadallera wrote: post #24

fiaz wrote: post #20

Sure being an "MCP" in the HN circle is absolutely meaningless and doesn't warrant the title "programming prodigy", but that's not the point of this article. The point is that this was a girl who came from a third world country where women are not treated as well as men are in the West, and made it to the Redmond campus based on her own ambition and drive to do something for herself.

> and made it to the Redmond campus based on her own ambition and drive to do something for herself. 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 fac…

One day you will come back to the comments you made here and find yourself embarrassed for sounding like such a little person. I hope you're better than this and we are just misunderstanding you.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#123

Post by dan00 » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 10:52 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #86

This thread and a the story make me equally sad. 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…

"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."

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.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#124

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 11:03 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #86

This thread and a the story make me equally sad. 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…

Geeks, and I am guilty of that myself, often miss the greater point and discuss endlessly increasingly narrow aspects of much larger issues. It's within our nature to do it.

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.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#125

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 11:10 AM UTC

hermannj314 wrote: post #32

MCP at 9 and got to meet Bill Gates? Wow! That is a great accomplishment. I'm almost 30 and I have not done either of those things! What a great quote, too. She seemed to have a great outlook. Rest in Peace.

Done that, no biggie there.

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.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#126

Post by suhastech » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 11:44 AM UTC

harichinnan wrote: post #111

jacquesm wrote: post #86

This thread and a the story make me equally sad. 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…

I feel really sorry for her parents. However your sympathy stems from ignorance of the Indian sub-continent. Middle class kids in India, and I assume Pakistan have the opposite problem of what you say. They are pressured into achieving academic success come what may. The Indian IITs select .5% of the applicants. Delhi university sometimes rejects applicants getting 98% in school because there are many who get even mo…

I definitely agree.

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.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#127

Post by Karunamon » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 2:10 PM UTC

skeptical wrote: post #97

Karunamon wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because he/she recognizes that any such discussion will not lead to any possibly productive output and instead be a pointless match of tilting at windmills. 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…

__Probably because he/she recognizes that any such discussion will not lead to any possibly productive output and instead be a pointless match of tilting at windmills.__ 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…

>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.

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.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#128

Post by brendan10211 » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 2:46 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #118

sp332 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Think before you speak" makes it very difficult to hold a normal conversation. Of course I'm not anti-thinking but it's very difficult to express yourself (in most media, but especially talking) if you hesitate constantly. 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.

> "Of course I'm not anti-thinking but it's very difficult to express yourself (in most media, but especially talking) if you hesitate constantly." 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 res…

That's why I like to type my responses, because they don't see it anyway until I press enter or whatever.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#129

Post by andreadallera » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 3:31 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #57

andreadallera wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, perspective. On average, that's certainly true. In this specific instance, not so. Take a 16 year old boy from the ghetto in the US and compare it to a rich upper caste Pakistani girl. Who has the most advantages?

I think, in changing your thought experiment, you're making my point for me. 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…

I know I'm beating a dead horse but I'll try anyway.

> 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.

It's very, very likely that some 9 years old kid in the ghetto has produced something much more noteworthy than becoming an MCP. You would expect that to be in the news, but it isn't there.

> 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

What I was trying to say is: think that you are a poor Pakistani little kid, working your ass off between work/school hours on your lame old computer. What would you think of the celebrations here? Again, that Pakistani little kid most likely exists. Most likely, there's hundreds of them. You don't hear of them in the news.

Re: Programming prodigy passes away at 16

#130

Post by andreadallera » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 3:34 PM UTC

ceol wrote: post #58

andreadallera wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're a true manager right to the end, my friend. Making decision with your heart alone and refusing to see logic and data when they're in front of you. May our paths never cross in real life.

There's nothing logical about your post, because a logical post wouldn't ignore that she was a 9 year old girl from Pakistan when she became a MCP and you weren't a 9 year old girl from Pakistan when you became a MCP. You refuse to see the vast amount of differences between you and her and then continue to make a comparison as though it has any meaning. That's not logic. That's jealousy.

> That's not logic. That's jealousy.

If you read my comments, you'll see that I wasn't making a comparison between me and her. I was making a comparison between her and somebody who's accomplished what she did and much more without being born in a rich family, and is striving to get something to eat at the end of the day. There's plenty of them, why aren't they on the news?