12-Year-Old Nigerian Is A Certified Java Programmer !!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: www.javalobby.org
April 23, 2007


As per Nigerian-German Business group, a 12-year old boy Allwell Worgu repeated a record of Nigeria repeated a record set six years ago by a Pakistani girl in mastering the Sun’s Java Certification exam. First, let me congratulate this kid, as it’s quite an achievement.Now let's take a look at this fact from a different perspective. To me, it’s just another fact proving that Java certification does not bear much value.

This exam is set as a multiple choice questions, and it can be passed by spending X amount of hours trying to memorize a certain number of language syntax and elements. It may be good to have on your resume if you are either a junior programmer or the language/technology is very new and employers are looking for some indications that your skills are at a certain level. Obtaining a job is a game with known rules, and you have to play by these rules. This was my reason for getting certified in 1999 – my Java skills did not get better beacuse of preparing for the test, but back than it was a nice-to-have line on your resume.

Allwell gives an excellent assessment of the exam:

"Failure was never an option for me," he replied, explaining that, "there is no big deal in writing the exam. When adults write exams, they have many things in their mind; that's why they always fail. May be those that fail were not ready, especially adults, who will be thinking about their business, their market, money in the bank, their stocks and so on, so they find it difficult to concentrate. As a child, I think its better to write it at this period when I don't have much distractions".

Exactly! While I have to worry about lots of things, a student just routinely takes yet another multiple-choice exam. There are more valuable certifications that require you to write programs or architect systems as opposed to selecting checkboxes.

Here’s another useful piece of advice from Allvell to those who are planning to take Java Certification exam,” "There was no tension, but I prayed before I started.”

After passing the exam, Allwell said, "I felt normal, I didn't feel that happy, because the exam was very simple and I was ready for it. My parents were happy with the result, my schoolmates and my principal congratulated me, urging me to keep it up".

The kid “strongly believes that black are more intelligent than the white”, which does not stop him from considering Harvard, Oxford and MIT. I wish him good luck in getting into one of these schools. But there is a really long way between passing a Java certification exam and getting accepted by Harvard.