Microsoft exams? Tough, you say? Pffft. 5-YEAR-OLD KID passes MCP test Wannabe techies take note: A five-year-old kid from Coventry has passed Microsoft's Certified Professional exam. According to the BBC, Ayan Qureshi – under the guidance of his dad, Asim – first showed an interest in computing at the age of three. When the young lad arrived at the exam centre to sit the test, invigilators …
"The history of Windows dates back to September 1981, when Chase Bishop, a computer scientist, designed the first model of an electronic device and project "Interface Manager" was started." - Wikipedia
I never said "released". Troll harder. I'm at least not claiming that anyone supports a v1 OS anymore.
"The history of Windows dates back to September 1981, when Chase Bishop, a computer scientist, designed the first model of an electronic device and project "Interface Manager" was started." - Wikipedia
It appears that you have not verified that time line against the source attributed to that sentence.
"I never said "released". Troll harder. I'm at least not claiming that anyone supports a v1 OS anymore."
In fairness you are correct, although release was implied given the context of the discussion with respect to developers/users actually getting support for the product they were using over a long period of time
On the other hand you did write "a track record of supporting operating systems longer than any other vendor" referring to Microsoft, which you would have known to be false had you taken a couple of minutes to visit Microsoft & Redhat's websites - or even Wikipedia.
Says the man who thinks .NET frameworks previous to 4 aren't cumulative.
Nobody can take anything you say about anything MS seriously.
Nice try, but the fact remains that a 5 year old passed an exam which is supposed to warrant that someone with that cert actually has the competence and experience to justify their (usually elevated) fee. I know HR departments rely on certs because they lack the knowledge to look at the person behind the CV (one of the reasons we now rely on personal networks and our own recruiters to find the right people).
I happen to know for a fact what the quality of an official Microsoft consultant was in the New Labour era because I personally spent a considerable amount of time getting them out of the holes they dug themselves (so an indirect thanks for the work, but I abhor blatant stupidity kept in place by politics). When you start dealing with the kind of life cycles, volumes and reliability a government needs, you cannot have idiots architecting, yet that was exactly what they did for almost a decade. In my personal opinion, a herd of kids would have probably done a better job so I'm not surprised that a 5 year old has shown these tests up for what they are.
Don't show me an MS certification. Show me what knowledge you have.
Isn't that the point of standardized testing? Everyone studies for the test, not the actual material but the test. It doesn't matter if you know how to solve any problem as long as you can remembersolve the problems on the test.
In the real world, we get kids straight out of university who would use a 1/2-13 when a 10-32 would do simply because they saw a commercial showing a car company bragging about the bolts they use to hold the bed on their pick-up truck - and here I thought gravity did most of the job holding the bed on the truck. I'd wager Boeing and Airbus are rather embarrassed by that video - not!
I saw him on Midlands Today last night, he spoke very much like he had been prepped, saying at the end he wanted to be an entrepreneur when he grew up. Having a 6 year old myself he didn't identify with any of the 5/6 year olds I know.
His 'network' consisted of a stack of cisco switches with a laptop and desktop plugged into one of them!
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I saw him on Midlands Today last night, he spoke very much like he had been prepped, saying at the end he wanted to be an entrepreneur when he grew up. Having a 6 year old myself he didn't identify with any of the 5/6 year olds I know.
OK, but it's quite possible the kid is that bright. I have come across bright kids to realise that we need to pay a lot of attention to their education or they'll nab our jobs before our pension. Thankfully, the current government is doing a great job not fixing the mess the previous lot has made of it, so I guess we're safe for now.
(yes, I'm joking - kids are brilliant and I will personally rip the head off anyone who even thinks of harming them)
I dunno. I saw a film about a lady called "Mary" and the kids she looked after and her friend who was a chimney sweep. They seemed to be having a whale of a time.
You simply couldn't make that film these days. He was literally a dirty old man hanging around with someone elses children. These days he'd probably be on the BBC payroll
It would allow for denser server rooms if we could employ children to crawl behind the racks in search of CAT5. Allegedly the failure of Sun's "server room in a shipping container" was because many Unix greybeards couldn't fit their manly bellies inside.
I wonder how many of the people criticising the MCP exams have actually taken an exam?
In my actual experience as an IT professional, a very small minority cheat and when an IT person has both experience and qualifications they far exceed the capabilities of experience alone.
I understand the need to have bits of paper saying you are qualified (I suspect mine say that I could hold my beer at 3 institutions over a decade...). I have never taken an MCP. I am sure that if I did take it I could pass it with sufficient study.
The only problem is then I would have to use Microsoft products, but I don't have that need in my life....
P.
I wonder how many of the people criticising the MCP exams have actually taken an exam?
By father studied for an MSCE (or whatever it is). He was between jobs, and was thinking about a shift in careers to IT, and the job centre suggested it.
Without reading the literature, and having never worked in enterprise IT (my only experience had come from helping the school IT tech in an NT4 environment) I passed the mock exam.
Admittedly, I am not great with MS admin (my career took me down the *nix route), but if I could do that they can't be that hard.
So what does this say about the quality of professional IT certifcation?
In the UK even BCS recognise microsoft certification so where does that leave the IT employer, with the lack of quality certification most IT most professionals are having to have a Masters (spending 4 years or more) to be recognised as qualified on paper.
I am thinking it is high time to move away from "professional" qualifications completely and return to a recognised and meaningful BSc in Computer Science. All the professional qualifications I have seen would be better titled product knowledge rather than attempting to indicate that the holder is educated to what would be professional level outside of IT. Further when UK degrees are again relying upon "professional certification" where they should be teaching the fundementals this means that there is not a single paper certification that proves anything about the holder's IT abilites.
Without a meaningful computing qualification everything is based upon where you worked and that means that at present in the UK going to work for 4 years and having a degree in any other subject makes you more recognised than following the IT degree route or even holding the latest "professional" qualifications especially when it comes to career advancement.
In summary there is not a respected IT degree out there so why are we paying to teach "modern" computing degrees at all
Then we would have a generation of graduates who knew lambda calculus, formal logic and Turing machines but had done no programming. Actually we wouldn't because nobody would sign up to those degrees.
If you want people with a solid grounding rather than just knowing Java - the maths departments are full of them. Computer science is only applied formal logic.
Obviously the fact that a 6 year old passed the test is news worthy, means that it does not happen often, just like you will see occasional stories that a 12 year old (or something similar) just graduated from Harvard with an MBA. That does not mean that the test or Harvard are garbage, but rather is showing that the individual that passed/graduated is exceptional.
Maybe you shouldn't base your decisions off of the .00001% of the cases?
"So what does this say about the quality of professional IT certifcation?" First you should look up what spell check is, and secondly, it says absolutely nothing about the quality of IT certifications.
First you should look up what spell check is, and secondly, it says absolutely nothing about the quality of IT certifications.
I note with interest that your contribution has about as much value as what MSCE qualified people offer. Let me guess, you had problems passing the test this 5 year old aced?
Yet I have seen too many IT Administrators which could not be bothered getting their certs, making completely misguided decisions based on a lack of knowledge. A bit of basic training would have helped in each of those situations. I have seen businesses paying heaps in lost purchasing none-required services, outages or over consumption because the IT staff did not know how to support the basic Windows Server environment which would have come by having certified staff.
Certs are not worthless, they are merely a benchmark upon which to weigh up the skills of prospective employees. Experience can be worthless too... I have see people doing the same job for 10 years, never looking at how it can be done better, not certified, just plodding... I have seen other people meet challenge after challenge, being mentored, getting heaps of professional development and adding heaps of value to the organisations they work for.
Experience and Certs go great hand in hand, one without the other can mean there is something lacking...
He was only five years old, that's not bad comprehension, just because we all like to have a dig at MS does not mean with have to belittle the achievements of a five year old, well done young man, you have done better than many Windows Sys Admins :-)
Edit: smiling for the youngster not the MS Sys Admins of much greater years
No. Young kids are good at remembering stuff, not necessarily understanding it.
As I stated above, the test is multi-choice click radio buttons. All he needs to know is the right answer. The same for any multi-choice exam. You don't need any intelligence except to remember the right answers you have been shown.
When multi-choice type "tests" was introduced, the pass rate went UP, but the actual intellect values dropped - hence why now most people under 35 are stupid.
Read private eyes 'dumb Britain' series.
Microsoft tests have not been multi choice all the way through for several years. May be time to update your qualifications if you ever had any. They now include quite a few simulations where you actually have to set something up or correct something in the interface without help files etc. if a few more sys admins did these tests I'd probably see a lot fewer systems with major problems, and that goes for Linux as well as Microsoft stuff.
"They now include quite a few simulations"
As do Cisco qualifications, the problem with these however is the virtual lab tests only support 1 accepted method of achieving the result even if there are other routes or commands that are just as valid to use, in IT there are always multiple ways to do the same job.
What about Red Hat exams? You need to know what you are doing to pass their exams. There are no multi choice questions. There is a computer in front of you and you have various tasks to complete. Use whatever method you want, there is usually more than one way to do something. That requires experience. I passed the RHCSA last year.
And there is another problem: the moving target. I was at a university a few years ago and asked to develop a program preparing a person for whatever certification was supposed to make you walk on water to the hiring people. We were going to do it with the experiences, not the "test preparation" strategies. We invested considerable time and energy over a few months, designing the labs and specifying the equipment needed. When we were about to finalize the proposal, Microsoft announced the test would be eliminated at Christmas that year. At the time of the announcement, and it wasn't obvious what other tests would take its place and in some ways it looked like whack-a-mole.
So we went to the relevant administrator, who was annoyed at the situation and what it had cost to get us to that point, and not with us. (Can you guess why we picked him to report to?) After asking the appropriate questions about what we could salvage out of our efforts, he said he'd explain to the people uphill that a test prep program just didn't look like a good use of the university's resources.
I agree with most of the negatives in your post but would not belittle the achievement for a 5/6 year old.
Also '... All he needs to know is the right answer.' does not make it any easier than any other exam !!!
If you have taken any exams of this type (Not just MS) you will know that you are battling not only comprehension of the sometimes convoluted language (to enable the answer to be a multiple choice question) but also some of the answers are counter-intuitive unless you know the knowledge with context.
Many people I have worked with over the last 35 years would struggle to succeed as this kid did.
The issues and flaws with this type of training are well known but this does not mean that the effort was of no note at all.
So give the kid a break and pat him on the back. Well Done !!!
[He will get enough of the office politics, back stabbing and sniping when he gets older !!! :=) ]
Young kids are good at remembering stuff, not necessarily understanding it.
Yup. My son was a very early reader, which turned out to be a real problem because it was too early for him to comprehend what he picked up. It took a year's worth of extra help for him to switch from just pronouncing what he read to picking up the information itself.
Having said that, now we're a few years further he's now an ace at speed reading :)
This is a little marvel of time management. The kid knows about SoC systems and still bothered puttering about...and his dad stayed away from the cliche 'took his chance' fine also. Where are all the 'forget you, I bet Mom did all the test runthroughs!' 'Let him try the high-pressure MCP gauntlet in Expury!'
@Mage
I passed 4 as well with only my own studying. Then, after gaining more experience, I couldn't manage to think the MS way when taking the next exam and didn't pass. Someone offered me a brain dump simulation, and I couldn't be bothered. I don't really care about the certs anymore, I resolve the Windows issues, I get paid the same. Maybe the kid can work with me and show me what he knows?
Genius or not, people don't tend to succeed and live happy fulfilling lives unless they're more rounded individuals. I've known plenty of geniuses (top Oxbridge 1sts) who couldn't survive outside the world of academia, and struggled to articulate themselves to people below their level, leaving them comparatively lonely and isolated. Not to mention the pressure they put themselves under to succeed. It often leads to severe depression and all too often suicide.
Pushing a 6 year old to an un-natural level to succeed, and making a big deal about it in the press is sick and wrong; it's child cruelty. Nurture the child's interests, but also make sure they're rounded - get them out in the park kicking a ball around with their peers, or some equivalent - don't ostracise the poor sods by encouraging a press freak show around them.
It's about time there was some legislation in place to protect childhood; kids aren't supposed to have sex before they're 16 because they're deemed to be not sufficiently mature; how about applying the same principle to qualifications? Sure, you still need to stretch the most able and make sure they don't get bored, but at the same time they need to keep their feet on the ground so they don't turn into social outcasts...
(Disclaimer - I have a gifted 6-year old son, who would probably be capable of the same attainment if I pushed him; but I'd rather he spent his time enjoying his childhood and socialising with his peers instead; there's plenty of time later in life for him to do that kind of thing)
Good point. How many kids now-a-days go up the park kicking a football around, out on their bike for hours on an end or just learning life?
Not many if at all - it's all phones/tablets et al and everything is done for you - you don't even need to think.
Ask anyone to do a simple math example using just paper and pen...
"(Disclaimer - I have a gifted 6-year old son, who would probably be capable of the same attainment if I pushed him; but I'd rather he spent his time enjoying his childhood and socialising with his peers instead; there's plenty of time later in life for him to do that kind of thing)"
Speaking as someone whose parents thought the only important thing was academic success, well said sir!
It's always easier to pass these if you have no real world experience with the product. The answers are always based on the way things are supposed to work according to the manual; not the way they actually work when you put them in production and discover the foibles. Experienced sys admins tear their hair out in these exams because they see a question and they know the REAL answer.. and know they have to grit their teeth and toe the company line about what the supposedly correct theoretical answer is.
Not trolling, I'm genuinely ignorant: do these exams require that you know how to read? Does the boy know how to read? 5 year-olds can learn to read, but generally for simple word recognition rather than the comprehension of complex concepts. Given that the BBC article mentions the difficult the father had in explaining the logic of the questions, I am having trouble believing that this test, by itself, demonstrates anything of value.
You guys are awesome. No, you guys are truly amazing. If only everyone was secure enough in their own skills to publicly sneer at little children on the internet.
The point is - many adults fail these tests. He didn't. He's clearly a very clever kid.
Shitting on his achievement this way must mean that each and every one of you is Carl Sagan.
Go you, you high-flying big-bucks earning super geniuses.
--
I am, of course, operating under the assumption that every comment here was made without bias, on personal experience and that none of the above commentards are semi-employable halfwits who read a fucking support script for a living.
There's nothing really wrong with them, but I'm rather dubious about certs without experience. I've met people with a few years of SQL and the certs and they're very good. And the certs may mean they cover stuff they don't normally and broaden their experience.
But a load of MCSEs just book learn.
'Book learn' in 2000 and you'd probably pass, 'book learn' in 2014 and you are likely to fail. The idea that it's easy to just braindump or read your way through a Microsoft exam is a rather outdated one, given the structure of the exam being orientated towards simulations where you HAVE to know what you're doing to accomplish the scenario.
I personally think it's amazing that the kid can read that well for a 5 year old. My son and nephew are both 5 and currently cannot read. They're not stupid either, it's just not that common for kids this age to read, but obviously there are a number that can too.
This kid could not only read the questions, but could also understand what they were asking. That in itself is amazing. The boys technical knowledge is irrelevant IMO, he's a smart lad. The certification he just achieved is going to be meaningless by the time he starts work, but the boy deserves an amazing amount of credit for what he achieved.
From the MCP website:
"MCP qualifying exams include all of the exams required in the Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA), MCSE, MCSD, and Microsoft Specialist certifications."
The one absolute constant in every news report, all of which appear pretty much boilerplated from the BBC, is that there are zero details beyond this.
Which exam?
Transcript?
MCP Number?
My bullshit detector is almost deafening on this one
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