Pakistani boy, seven, becomes world’s youngest computer programmer

LONDON: British Pakistani child genius, Muhammad Humza Shahzad, has set a new record by becoming the world’s youngest qualified computer programmer at the age of seven.

This is not the first time Humza Shahzad has set a world record. The News had earlier reported that in 2015 Humza, then aged 6, became the youngest MS Office Specialist by passing three latest Microsoft Office exams which includes MS Word 2013, MS PowerPoint 2013 and MS Excel 2013. His recent outstanding professional qualification authorises him to become qualified programmer to pass MS exam "98-361 Software Development Fundamentals". Through this exam, Microsoft validates the proficiency of candidate in the areas like C# language, object oriented Design, web app, windows app, console app, web service, windows service and Databases.

Humza’s parents Asim Shahzad and Seemab Asim told The News that computing skills come naturally to their son and they never put him under any pressure to learn. They said they are the “proudest parents” because their son has made a world record. They said they have worked with him to develop his own interest but he takes his own initiatives and comes up with new ideas in routine.

They, however, said that they were not bothered whether he received the global media recognition or not. To them it matters the most that their son has got the outstanding practical skills as they will always want to see him doing bigger things.

Since from a young age, Humza has seen his father working on laptops non-stop because of his IT professional job here with several multinational companies. Humza was born in Lahore in 2009 but his parents moved to London in 2011 after Asim Shahzad was offered an IT job.

A Microsoft spokesman said about Humza: “He is so skilled at the age of 7 and can easily create all kind of computer applications and manages to develop his own basic shopping cart app. He has got his hands dirty in Windows desktop App, console App, windows services, Web services and finds it really fun to develop simple console based game applications. He can explain about object oriented programming, heap, stack, memory management, data structures perhaps better than many experienced programmers.”

Speaking to The News, Humza said about his latest achievement: "I am feeling ecstatic and making fun with my new skills. I want to be the new Bill Gates one day. I like to watch fiction movies at home, I play games on IPad and laptop and play football with Dad.”