[hoodq19]

Really? A young girl dies, hacker or not. A writer who was touched by her writes about it. And the only thing worth writing is that you beat her to programming by 2 years. Bravo!

Not that this applies to you, but at what age do people learn empathy and sensitivity?

[bane]

I think andreadallera just wants an msnbc digital life writeup as well.

andreadallera, here's the author's email address [e-mail], enjoy petitioning him for your own digital ink noting and praising your deep feelings of self worth -- those being more important than the death of a child.

[andreadallera]

No no no not at all - Sorry if it came out that way.

On a personal level, I am deeply sorry for her death. Given time, she might have become a great programmer.

On a more general level, when I see something like this on the news, I can't help but ask myself why exactly somebody has written an article about this particular person. In this case, it doesn't seem to me that she was the prodigy they're talking about. A smart kid with a will to improve herself? Certainly. But think about the context - she came from a very rich Pakistani family. What would you think, as a 16 year old boy from Pakistan, coming from a poor family and working your bones off to make a living, coding at night, of this story? Because, you know, it's very likely that there's somebody like the boy in question in Pakistan.

Scope mixing is the bane of modern communication. You can't use empathy as an excuse to talk about anything. This personal tragedy should have remained personal, not brought up on the news. Just my humble opinion.

[bmahmood]

My family is of Pakistani origin, and I have lived in Pakistan for several years. I think discounting her talent, simply because she's from a "very rich Pakistani family" is unfair.

Yes, elitist families have more opportunities than the rest, but counter-intuitively given the feudal elite culture of Pakistan, the rich are often devoid of ambition and simply join family businesses. Girls, especially, are raised with no other ambition than to get married.

I think for this girl to have such greater ambitions, despite the rampant chauvinistic expectations of her society, despite a country where everyone (including the rich) have 5-10 hrs of electricity/gas/water a day, despite living in a country in political upheaval, is pretty exemplary. And her talent, as such, is impressive in context.