But that’s barely scratching the surface. “From the time he was a few months old, he would not want to eat until the computer screen was on and he could see it,” says his mother Cynthia Farhan Risha. “We tried to resist at first, worrying it might do harm to his eyesight but our efforts went in vein as he would not eat or sleep and would cry if he wasn’t in front of the PC,” she adds. From then on Roopkatha has gone on to spend “an average of 12 hours in front of the PC every day and over 30 thousand hours so far” according to his mother.
Roopkatha can type better than most adults and with proper English, not a wonder, given that he has learned how to program all by himself. “We saw that he took a liking for the PC and learned everything about programming by himself. Most of what he does currently is honestly too complicated for us to fully understand. He did not get any guidance or help in learning programming or operating the computer,” adds an amazed Cynthia.
And amazing it is given how naturally gifted Roopkatha is. If ever the words perfect marriage were to be used, it would be for between Roopkatha and a computer. One would imagine that Roopkatha is given a massively powerful state-of-the-art PC with a better than average net connection, but truth be told his PC monitor has a dead pixel and his laptop runs on a Sandy Bridge Core i3 Processor, regulation stuff.
His father, Wasim Farhan, a businessman, believes there is no end to how far Roopkatha will go in life. “I think he has the capability in him to one day be able to stop time!” He adds, “While Roopkatha has been able to make headlines in mainstream media, there is still very little of him that has actually gone public,” and because of that a simple timeline has been created to further decipher Roopkatha’s genius.
►►2006 – 07
Roopkatha started computing when he was just 7 months old and learned basic typing by the age of one.
►►2008
By the age of two he completed games such as Age of Empires, Need for Speed and Star Defender. He could create folders, install software and make graphs and tables. He started writing properly constructed sentences.
►►2009
At the age of three he had played over 200 games including the likes of Red Dead Redemption and Modern Warfare 2. He had become an efficient typist, typing without having to look on the keyboard. By then he had learnt how to edit images in Photoshop and operate advanced software such as Flash5 and Adobe Illustrator.
►►2010 -11
By the age of four had learnt to develop software using emulators such as Project64 1.7, DeSmuME, QEMU and ePSXe. He learnt to create animations using PIVOT as well as work on CamStudio and HyperCam. By the time he was five, he became proficient in C++. In January 2011 World News Agency recognised him as the world’s youngest computer programmer.
►►2012
He learnt to use RPG maker expertly and also started working with VMware Workstation which began his interest for working with multiple operating systems. He soon acquired a high level of knowledge and competence on various operating systems and programming languages – tasks considered advanced for even senior experts. While at the same time he started working on Virtual Box and Parallels Workstation. In April, BBC World News would acknowledge him as the youngest computer programmer in the world.
►►2013
In January, Roopkatha’s story so far would get included in a class eight (Bengali Medium) English text book. He recently created an entire operating system with SUSE studio. Till date he has played over 1000 games and he is in line for writing his name in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest IT expert. He recently developed a knack for editing and creating Wikipedia pages and takes great interest in cosmology.
Roopkatha is a genius no doubt. He has not been entered into an educational institute and nor should he be. He is too good for that and deserves special care. However that is where the problems arise. Our country simply does not have the tools to help ensure a special talent such as Roopkatha’s can be raised as well as he should. He will not get the necessary help that he needs, if and when the time arises, to move even further. He is still a child, innocent, pure and naïve.
He can come up with smart one lines such as “I will one day be the ruler of the world,” and “Windows 8 is Microsoft’s bad version of Windows 7.” But there lies a problem in that first line, he is essentially aware that he is extremely good at what he does, and has developed a personality. And at this age it is not unexpected, “He makes sure he uses the PC, and there is no way we touch it when he is on it. He might put a complex code to lock it for us if we try to stop him,” says his mother jokingly. “I’ve been trying to teach him to read and write in Bangla. Hopefully he will learn to read and write in his mother tongue soon,” his father adds.
“We plan on going to the USA soon in hopes that Roopkatha gets his best chance and reaching his potential,” his father says. “Either that or we hope to get support from our government to ensure Roopkatha gets what is best for him,” his mother quickly adds. Whatever the case may be, he is and will be our nation’s pride and one would hope he continues to put Bangladesh in the forefront for the right reasons, even if he gets scooped up by NASA, Google or Microsoft. So far though, his journey has been exactly what his name suggests – a fairy-tale.
Reference: http://goo.gl/cN5yD
