Microsoft's 10-year-old Certified Professional 791
idigjazz writes "Meet Arfa, a promising young software programmer from Faisalabad, Pakistan, who is believed to be the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world. She received the certification when she was 9. During a recent meeting with Bill Gates, she presented him with a poem she wrote that celebrated his life story."
So what does this say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that this is not an exclusive or.
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Insightful)
- blah
Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
Thats not quite fair (Score:5, Insightful)
If you recall, there have already been cases of very young kids acing the college board tests, due to very careful tutoring and memorization. Having taken the MS tests, i can hardly imagine that approach wouldnt work if done well enough.
Not to discredit the kid, this is an accomplishment certainly, which indicates atbest a very strong computer aptitude and at worst a very very good memory, both of which are extremely useful skills. But i hardly compare this with mozart.
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what does this say? (Score:4, Funny)
Well how else do you think Bill Gates gets customers? It's the same reason Kim Jong-il is in power. Gotta get 'em while they're young!
She can't be *THAT* bright...... (Score:4, Funny)
How twisted is that??
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why am I responding to an AC? I must be loopy.
Re:So what does this say? (Score:5, Funny)
You're on crack.
Re:So what does this say? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what does this say? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because once upon a time, only programmers used computers. You're statement is in fact true in that sense, but it's a giant distortion of logic to carry that argument forward to today and say it still is true.
That's like saying that anyone who can drive a car, can design one. This statment might be true for the first few guys to design and build their own cars (btw it *wasn't* Henry Ford) but it sure ain't true today. You can't always apply yesterdays' truths to today!
(Either that or you're a sys admin/tech support guy with a grudge against programmers, serving up some nice flamebait.)
Re:So what does this say? (Score:4, Insightful)
But I agree with you that you can be a useful programmer in much less time.
I would also encourage anyone who has a computer to learn some programming. Otherwise I don't see the point. I don't like the way computers have become just another device to deliver entertainment. The whole point of the machine is to enable people to automate processes, to anaylze data, to, in short, compute.
Having a computer and not learning to program it has always struck me as being like having an airplane and only using it to taxi around the airfield.
I also don't think everyone who learns some programming needs to go on to become a professional and to master some sort of elite skills.
I just started doing it in the mid 70's (I was a kid) for fun. My old man was an electrical engineer and we built our first S-100 bus Z80 based system from scatch in 1976. I had to write the boot ROM for the thing to boot into a very early version of CP/M (I think it was 1.1 - it was CP/M 1.4 by the time we really had everything working). We burned our own EPROMs and we had those lovely 8-inch SSSD floppy drives. A> and B>
Ah... Memories: A> PIP B:=A:*.COM Mmmm....
The first programs I wrote were just for my own curiosity. I've always been more linguistic than mathematical (although I do well at both), so a couple of my first programs were a letter frequency counter and a vocabulary analyzer.
The first just counted how many times each letter appears in a given text file. The second kept an array of distinct words and an array of counts. I recall that I used a binary search to find the word in the one array and then used that index to find the count in the parallel array. I also recall that I wrote a bubble-sort algorithm to resort the array each time a new word was found. Of course that got to be horribly slow, so I hunted around for a faster algorithm. I'd love to claim I independently arrived at the quicksort algorithm, but I didn't. I found it in a book and worked through it to understand it.
I guess I'm both agreeing and disagreeing with you. I don't think that everyone can become a good programmer. You have to like that kind of mindset to do it. I don't think everyone can even be a useful programmer, although most probably can.
Here's where I strongly agree with you: People should be encouraged to program. They should be treated gently when they present workproduct. If someone had said to me about my little vocabulary analyzer "Boy, are you stupid! You're an idiot to sort that way! What a retard!" I doubt I would have carried on. Instead a "grownup" friend of my dad (a programmer -- my dad, as an EE, looked on programming as "the black arts" -- he always used to say that the only reason software existed was because no one had invented an editor for hardware) said "I notice that your program spends most of its time sorting that list. Do you think that you could make that sort faster?"
Things like that keep you going.
The fact that today I could write the same program in three lines of perl without knowing anything about sorting doesn't change the usefulness of the knowledge and experience I gained by doing it the hard way.
So, while I'll be the first to say that being a good programmer is difficult, I'll also say that few professional programmers are actually good programmers who could really come up with an original non-obvious algorithm.
I'll also say don't let the naysayers break your spirit. You may never become a great programmer. But you might. (I wouldn't call myself a great programmer -- that's reserved for the Djikstra's of the world) And I guarantee that you will learn many useful and fun things along the way.
Oh, and no programmer who thinks he is an elite programmer actually is. All the really talented ones know full well that they have no monopoly on cleverness. Even a junior programmer of modest skills sometimes thinks of the one thing no one else has.
Re:So what does this say? (Score:3, Funny)
I can go door to door around here and find thousands of porn-surfers, yet even in my own office building among a group of unix guys, I can only find one other real programmer.
Just confirms (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just confirms (Score:5, Informative)
Example: In some Windows server exams, you are asked about rolling out installations to large organizations with gazillion additional programs and custom bits. In the Real World this is commonly done by imaging the disk and just dropping disk images to the desktops. The Microsoft Way(tm) is obiviously to use an installation server, unattended installation scripts and other arcane junk, and then pray that the installation works like it should
Same goes for lots of firewall/networking related things where everyone in the real world uses non-MS solutions. But in the MS world of the MS exams, you are supposed to use ICS and other 'great' solutions - and actually know how they work
Now having said that, the MCP that this article refers to is a big joke. You can get MCP certified on just about anything, and the easiest ones are to the tune of "here's how you start up a windows PC and use mouse". Over here we call 'MCP' a 'Minesweeper certified professional'. Lots of MCPs are certified in something like Word and Excel, and the exams for using those are completely braindead easy.
Re:Just confirms (Score:5, Informative)
"Now having said that, the MCP that this article refers to is a big joke."
Microsoft Certified Application Developer is what she got according to TFA.
While its no MCSD (which she does plan on doing) or MCSE , there was plenty of C# dev in it.
Medioce Poetry (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure that Bill Gates was pleased beyond words to hear his life story summed up in a few lines of Vogon poetry.
Re:Medioce Poetry (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps you should read poems written by Perl developers instead.
Re:wrong (Score:5, Informative)
From the article The certification she received was as a Microsoft Certified Application Developer.
That's 3 development exams [microsoft.com]
An experienced developer would need to study for these.
Re:Just confirms (Score:4, Insightful)
are you sure you read the article? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and no. (Score:5, Interesting)
I was lucky. When I was in elementary school and showed a real gift for computers, several teachers went considerably out of their way to put me in groups of people who knew what they were doing. By the time I was nine, I was spending my summers in the local community college's computer lab. I wasn't taking college courses, no, but my teachers hooked me up with a student named David Carlson and asked if he could just spend an hour each week answering my questions.
David became my best friend in no time flat. An hour a week turned into a considerably more during the summertime, between his jobs and other commitments. I learned LISP from David (on a Symbolics LISP Machine--talk about your sexy hardware). Shortly after I turned ten, David showed me the Y-combinator. It took me a few weeks to understand it, but when I did--whoa! I was blinded, just blinded, by the beauty of it.
Then we moved away to a different city, different school system. Supposedly this one was much better, but there were no longer any teachers who'd go out of their way to recruit college students into letting me hang out with them for a while. They expected me to go through the exact same hoops as anyone else. I wasn't even allowed to take Programming in BASIC at the high school level. No more LISP Machines for me. From '86 to '92, I had no access to any machines more powerful than an Apple IIgs, and no languages more powerful than Basic. I wouldn't get access to a LISP environment again until I got to college in '94.
Now I'm a graduate student. Last semester I took a course in programming language theory, where we were exposed to the beauty of the Y-combinator. And to think... I knew the Y-combinator when I was just ten years old, just due to the kindness of a smart college student who wasn't smart enough to know "the Y-combinator is too much for kids".
David Carlson was the finest teacher I ever had, because he didn't have preconceptions about what I could or couldn't learn. And as soon as we moved away and my education got turned over to bureaucrats who were concerned about "age-appropriate academic skills", I got left out in the cold.
David died a couple of years ago of brain cancer, way before his time; he was barely forty. He left behind a wife and kids, and you know what? I think those kids are going to turn out to be geniuses. Because he and his wife were too damn dumb to know their kids couldn't possibly learn things.
Re:Yes and no. (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes opportunity knocks. Other times, you have to roam the streets until you find it, beat it over the head, and drag it back to your place kicking and screaming... Where you have your pit already prepared... Some nice swing albums from the forties, a couple of car batteries, a fifty-pound bag of lime, bottle of ether... Wait, what were talking about again?
Re:Yes and no. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is this attitude that is responsible for the sorry state of education in this country (USA). The vice principal of our high school infamously remarked that students such as myself would learn "by themselves in a dark closet with a flashlight." Perhaps intended as a com
Re:Just confirms (Score:5, Interesting)
microsoft went out of it's way to make sure that someone that learned how to admin on their own can NOT pass the tests without buying the coursework or taking classes.
Example? sure...
What partition do you boot from? Boot or system?
if you said boot then you are wrong. Microsoft says you boot from the system partition, and run from the boot partition.. now this was back in my NT4 sertification days, they may have removed that decietful nugget of information by now but I doubt it. they intentionally obfuscate and use backward speak to make sure that someone that had been in computers for 20 years can NOT pass the test without paying for courses or books.
Very scumbaggy of them.
Re:Just confirms (Score:4, Interesting)
Some certs are worthwhile.... Cisco and Novell for example. Others have a much lower value.
Cisco training materials are clear and TRUTHFUL in the information.. Microsoft training materials typically have either ass-backwards information or are full of Corprate-microsoft-newspeak that is 100% worthless in the real world, but required to pass the test. Just try and read the Microsoft published manual for the VB.NET certifications.. the guy slams hungarian notation as useless and confusing. and then has examples that have variable names that in a 45,000 line app will cause the next developer utter hell.
BTW, I recieved my MSCE in 98 and then let it expire to satisfy a stupid PHB requirement that all IT employees be MS certified. after the company spend millions to get that so we could tout a stupid statistic to customers that "all our peopel are certified!" the bean counters promptly dropped the requirement citing expenses. (yay for the bean counters!)
Sorry about the long winded response to the obvious troll from a MS drone but I am in a GREAT mood today.
Re:Just confirms (Score:3, Funny)
Impressive but... (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, shes 9 - and she's a girl
Epic Poem (Score:5, Funny)
There once was a man from Nantucket
Who told all the world to suck it
Selling insecure code
He sure was a chode
And his ethics could not fill a bucket
- G
Re:Epic Poem (Score:5, Funny)
There once was a programmer named Gates
Who never could get any dates
So he bought MS-DOS
Became his own boss
And now he just masturbates
Re:Are you the pot or the kettle? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Are you the pot or the kettle? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Epic Poem (Score:4, Funny)
Was it a haiku?
Re:Epic Poem (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Epic Poem (Score:5, Funny)
I stole stuff from Jobs.
And now I own Microsoft.
Holy crap I'm rich.
How difficult is that certification? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How difficult is that certification? (Score:5, Informative)
As a whole, they're pretty easy - someone half-way bright could cram for them.
The summary does her down, BTW; it says she's MCP, which means passed any one exam, including some piss-takingly simple ones on the administration tracks, whereas she's actually got MCAD which means she's passed a number of developer exams. Yes, some of those are just cram windows features but one of those, the architecture one, actually needs some experience and thought. Or at least it did back in my day when the exam was new - maybe there's "here's all the answers" books for that too now.
-- a VC++ 6 MCSD.
Re:How difficult is that certification? (Score:4, Informative)
D'oh, showing my ignorance of these new-fangled exam tracks.
Actually, the that exam [microsoft.com] isn't needed for MCAD [microsoft.com], just MCSD [microsoft.com].
So yeah, the ones she has are pretty much cram-for exams.
Re:How difficult is that certification? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevertheless, I suppose it's still impressive when a 10-year old gets though these exams... if only because it means they did a lot of reading and actually worked with a computer (instead of just playing games on it). Hell, most kids that age have the attention span of a flash bulb!
Re:How difficult is that certification? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is probably exactly what Microsoft wants.
Re:How difficult is that certification? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is probably exactly what Microsoft wants.
Well, naturally. SMTP is just telnet over port 25 using a series of predetermined commands (the protocol) that allows different hosts to exchange information with each other (email). The protocol itself is really quite simple (some say, too simple for current needs, and that it needs upgrading, or even replacing)
There are two ways to study for the test (Score:3, Insightful)
I find there are in general two ways to study for the tests (each with variations):
1. Aquire some real world experience, study the material, maybe take some practice tests (like Transcender) and then take the real tests. 2. Go to www.braindumpcentral.com [braindumpcentral.com] and find the questions and answers that will be on the test and memo
and in 3 years. (Score:3, Insightful)
Equal Opportunities (Score:4, Insightful)
"It should be balanced -- an equal amount of men and an equal amount of women," she explained afterward.
I think in any job the only people who should be there are those that have proven their worth.
This OTT political correctness/quota balancing act in lots of workplaces is just dumb.
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:5, Interesting)
And in general to the people who are scoffing at the MCAD - she's 10 years old. Perhaps that escaped your massive brains but this is an article talking about something that is a good achievement for someone her age. Its not even worth noting for someone only a few years older than her. At 10 most slashdotters were still singing soprano and afraid of girl germs (It seems some still are).
Well done to Arfa and her father. I hope she becomes a very competent member of the software development community. We can all hope she discovers the wonders of open source though...
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Insightful)
Well done to Arfa and her father. I hope she becomes a very competent member of the software development community.
Agreed. But I fear for her and millions of promising girls in the Islamic world for whom misogyny, early forced marrage, and the burqa await.
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:5, Informative)
Predominately suicide bombers have been rather unsuccessful, under-achiving young men.
I think we are safe from young Arfa, who doesn't appear to fit that description.
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly - one of the his coaches, NOT one of the actual bombers, was PhD student (Osama Bin Laden is quite well educated too, but you don't see him volunteering to blow himself up).
They all lived in a very poor, violent and high crime working class areas (or perhaps more accurately, a non-working area, given the primary industry is the collection of social secur
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:5, Insightful)
So, shall we cut her a little slack?
(Also, don't forget that Pakistan is patriarchal Muslim country; a little movement towards sexual equality wouldn't be a particuarly bad thing. Not, I hasten to add, that Pakistan is among the worst offenders in this area, what with having had a woman prime minister for example.)
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, there's no evidence whatsoever that men are more capable than women when it comes to programming or support. And it's fairly ludicrous to assume that women don't get into the field because they just don't feel like it. So we have to ask: what exactly is keeping a field where men have no inherent advantage whatsoever a primarily male-dominated industry?
My guess - based on more than 20 years of purel
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Interesting)
But you DID take up a highly individualistic, abstract activity because you LIKED it. In general, girls like to spend their time on other things. They do not think creating computer programs is cool.
You could also track back to the video games you mention. Why do boys play video games and girls not (on average)? Does this poin
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Insightful)
But somehow, I think I can live with a bit of radical feminism from a ten year old Pakistani girl.
Re:Equal Opportunities (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right though. We need to take nine year old children to task on their political beliefs. Her ideal of a world of equality is in direct opposition to the reality of the situation. We must disabuse her of her childish notion that people are equally good.
Or perhaps we could let a nine year old dream of a better world.
Burn em fast, burn em hard (Score:3, Funny)
This chick will be so burnt out by the time she is 20, it won't even be funny. I saw the smile, what a nice smile. In 4 years, she will look like Glenn Close or Susan Sarandon.
Send her to the customers at 15, she will be crying to Mommy 2 weeks later. Then comes the drinking, the drugs, 3 or 4 divorces.
Re:Burn em fast, burn em hard (Score:3, Interesting)
Not "prodigious" (Score:3, Insightful)
Right Place, Right Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Right Place, Right Time (Score:5, Insightful)
"certificates" (Score:5, Insightful)
No-one hires someone just because they can obtain a certificate. I bet you could train a monkey to get a Micr0$oft Cert1ficat3 - but you still wouldn't hire them or give them a position of authority and responsibility.
The fact that a 10yr old child can obtain a Microsoft Certificate means that it's no indication of total worth as a software developer or employee.
Re:"certificates" (Score:3, Insightful)
That's how I got hired, and that is how I get raises.
I got my foot in the door by having a bunch of certs. That got the interview. I just found out that the _only_ thing keeping me from getting bumped up the $ ladder is to upgrade my exams.
Skill? nah knowledge? no Charisma? Hell no. A bunch of stupid letters after my name? yeah.
That is how I am rewarded.
Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait, 9 year old is younger than 8 year now? (Score:4, Funny)
Calc.exe ?
MCAD, read the article (Score:3, Insightful)
MCAD Requirements and Training Resources [microsoft.com]
_presented_ him with a poem, didn't write it. (Score:3, Informative)
don't be so negative (Score:5, Insightful)
From the point of view of adult programmers an MCAD may not count for a lot, and Microsoft may be a nasty company, but this is still an impressive little girl with an interesting story. There aren't a lot of nine year olds who can write C#. That's a good bit harder than some baby Basic, if for no other reason than the detail that you have to take care of and the object-orientation. And not very many nine year olds have the interest and dedication to pursue something like this.
Its also important to realize that this is a little girl in a country that gives very few opportunities to women, especially women who are not from the upper class. According to the article, her dad is a soldier. It doesn't sound like she comes from a wealthy, powerful family. So, while getting this certificate may well not make her a genius, it does make her a smart and persistent little girl who has done something quite unusual not only for her age but, in her country, for her gender. I say good for her, good for her family for encouraging her rather than telling her not to act unladylike, and good for Microsoft for giving her the trip. (But if I were in charge at Microsoft, I would have thrown in a stop at Disneyland.)
Re:don't be so negative (Score:4, Funny)
Back in my day, us kids had to write in assembly, and we didn't have these fancy registers you young whipper-snappers have today! We just had an accumulator and sixteen K of memory!
Kids these days! You've all got it so easy!
And get off my lawn!
</grumpy_old_man>
Reminds me of a quote.... (Score:4, Funny)
I think she is smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
Heres a photo of her.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/photos/photo.asp?Ph
and heres an article
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/232514_msf
Before you call her a kissass realize she actually
asked intelligent questions such as why there werent more women at microsoft(before the snarky comments remember she is a 9 year old girl speaking up for equality in a nation like Pakistan) and told a Microsoft VP her vision for self-navigating car.
You have to realize for a little geek girl in a country like Pakistan going to Microsoft is like
going to a paradise where everything works and people are smart just like her.
If you check out her photo, in another 10-15
years she is going to be a major geek hottie...
so be nice and not be pricks!
This is just a reminder to all us geeks who love to bash people from that part of the world...
Pakistan and india are the only two countries that I know of where many of the geeks are women who are good looking and its considered a good thing to be living with your parents as an adult until you are married...think about it!
Re:I think she is smart... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think she is smart... (Score:3, Funny)
What's this "in 10-15 years" stuff?
Hooray, creepy young girl lust!
Bill Sidious! (Score:5, Funny)
(eek).
That's nothing.. (Score:4, Interesting)
He's five now but a few months ago he proudly told me he'd changed his desktop image to match that of my desktop. Spooky!
Oh, just to redeem him - he saw me using a ssh connection to do some admin on one of our Linux servers and was interested in the non-gui-ness of it and the fact that you had to type in commands, so I showed him a few. Now his favourite 'trick' when he sees me logged in is to do a 'df -h' or 'top' for me!
What do you think - RHCE at five??!!
She wrote a poem about BillG? (Score:3, Funny)
I wrote Bill a poem too... (Score:4, Funny)
you know how hard it is to be an also ran
and since the trial you've been working so hard on your tan
to do everything you think you duly can
to be doted on and smiled at by even just one fan
The EU said go away...China said come back another day, so now it's third world slumming for you while you pray
that you don't end up in a pakistani jail where you'll get blown away. die bill die
So what ... (Score:4, Insightful)
what Kool-aid is she drinking? (Score:4, Funny)
Shame on you! (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking away any credit of her accomplishment because she took a Microsoft certification is just plain vile and stupid.
Cheers,
Adolfo
Poem? I got one of those... (Score:3, Funny)
Violets are blue.
Your OS is shit.
And so are you.
Please, no applause, just throw money.
Submitted this two months ago (Score:5, Interesting)
* 2005-05-05 22:04:04 Nine year old girl becomes an MCP (IT,Microsoft) (rejected)
I wonder what makes the story more interesting now that it is old.
Re:Submitted this two months ago (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you know how things work here at Slashdot? Despotism at it's best.
GJC
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Funny)
of course... a lot of it was stuff like..
10 print "k-mart sucks dick!"
20 goto 10
entered on a commodore 64 at a local k-mart store for all the passer bys to see
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article was an insightful look at life through the eyes of a very brave young woman growing up in a society that does not offer many opportunities for women.
Having written a calculator and a sorting program in C# along with earning her MCAD, I consider Arfa a computer programmer by any definition.
Arfa has demonstrated considerable creativity, imagination, hard work and considerable drive. I'll gladly give up your job for her to find good work =p
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Might not be a big deal to you, however, for a girl that young in a third world country, such as Pakistan, it certainly is. She was bought over to the US (first time her father and her left Pakistan) and everything was probably paid for. So she was showing her appreciation. It isn't everyday a young child from Pakistan gets to come to the U.S., and especially on a trip paid for by the world's richest man.
However, if she is eager to start hacking away, and Microsoft won't hire her now, she should be encouraged to contribute to the Open Source community - even on a Windows project. That way, she will learn not only how to code more, but also learn how to interact with developers across the globe. That, at that very young age, will surely look extremely impressive and will teach her infinite things.
Re:Big deal. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not so, it's the first time they've been in the USA...
quote:
And pakistan may be a third world country, but she certainly isn't representative of the people living there.
quote:
Impressive girl though, too young yet to
Re:Get them young huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Its all about the big push from the top to get us some damn chicks in these tech schools of ours.
Re:Get them young huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get them young huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
But what good is a certification in Logo [wikipedia.org]? I guess coding for Windows beats making shoes for Nike.
Maybe they're getting them this young so someone's ready to work on the Y3K problem?
Re:Get them young huh? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Get them young huh? (Score:3, Funny)
This is the Microsoft Youngling!
breaking away at puberty (Score:3, Interesting)
If this particular girl is as smart as they say, by the time she's in her late teens, she probably will want to have the level of control that Windows cannot give her.
Re:1) Isn't this good? 2) It's not about the kid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:9 year old completes single exam on workstation (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know C#.
This isn't your average nine year old.
Or maybe she is, and we just don't give nine year olds enough credit.
In any case, she did something very cool, and we shouldn't be trying to tear down a little girl to make ourselves feel a bit less like the discontented band of underachievers that we really are. Instead, we should be congratulating her, and encouraging her to get some Linux certifications under her belt.