We also wouldn't have scoffed as much if she were merely three years older, and a boy, and working in PHP and Javascript instead of Microsoft technologies:
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.
Perhaps when she is thirty-three percent older she'll be more creative, too!
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.
So your first argument is that he's "merely three years older", and then your response to a rebuttal is that he's as much as "thirty-three percent older".
The sad thing is, I actually noticed this inconsistency. But I decided to leave it in just to see who noticed. ;)
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.
