Wasik Farhan Roopkatha, a six-year-old Bangladeshi boy, has hogged the headlines of the international media as he created history by clinching the title of world's youngest computer programmer.
The story of Roopkatha, Bangla for 'fairytale', has overshadowed even (a) fairytale. The New York Herald Tribune, California Observer, Estate News, Children Post and many international websites have recognized him as the youngest computer programmer on earth.
The UK-based globally-acclaimed TV show, Ripley's Believe It or Not, informed his parents recently that the Ripley's would include Roopkatha in its new book, which would hit bookshops worldwide in September this year. His parents have already penned an agreement with Ripley's to this end.
At this tender age of six, when most of the children play games with toys, Roopkatha develops his own computer system (with windows) and runs tags and code of computer programming like an expert.
The born genius, a resident of Gulshan in the capital Dhaka, unbelievably started computing when he was hardly seven months old, and learned writing on computer at the age of only two, said his proud mother Cynthia Farheen Risha.
"Every day, the wonder boy spends more than 12 hours on computer and knows how to change the games' characters by using emulator. He has also an excellent command over computer programming language (C & C++)," she said.
At the beginning, his parents tried to refrain him from playing on computer as they though that spending much time on computer may damage his eyes.
"But our efforts went futile as the boy made a hullabaloo and stopped taking food protesting our move. At last, we were compelled to allow him to play on computer, and now he spends 12-13 hours on computer every day," Risha said.
She said her son's curiosity about computer had started a couple of days after his birth. He would look at computer monitor with eyes unblinking and refrained from eating until the computer was switched on.
She said Roopkatha never took IT lessons and learned everything without taking anybody's help.
Risha said he has already played more than 700 games and completed many complicated games like Sonic-knuckles(all sonic series), Prince of Persia, Terminator 3, Hercules, Air Conflicts, Age of Mythology, lock on, azangara, Metal Gear Solid, Mig-29 fulcrum, Mario Forever(all Mario series), Super Mario64 Nintendo 64, Need for Speed series, The bugs life, legend of Zelda, Star Defender, Red dead redemption, lock on flaming cliffs, Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, Flight simulator lll, Eve online, Modern Warfare 2, FPS mechanics, Age of Empires 3, Rise of Legends, Castle vania - legacy of darkness act.
The computer prodigy can develop software using various emulator such as project64 1.7, dolphin, Game Cube, Nintendo 64, Gameboy Advance, Virtual Boy, DeSmuME and Computer Emulators. PC- Engine Emulators, Wonderswan Emulators, Atari 2600 Emulators, Atari Jaguar Emulators, MSX Emulators, Microsoft XBox, Microsoft XBox 360 act.
He knows operating system setup and troubleshooting. And more than 5000 English words are in his store and with the words, he can make sentences.
Typing is a very simple matter to him as the boy can type words with his tiny fingers as swift as any highly efficient typist without having a look at the keyboard.
The computer wizard can perfectly manage games project tools and
synchronize any project with other projects. He can also use different complex codes and run them easily.
Roopkatha can browse internet and send emails without any help. He can also enter any website and search any information through search engines. He has also good knowledge about hardware side by side with an excellent command over MS Word, Windows XP, Power Point, Angle and Photo Shop.
Creating file through MS Word, text design, picture ad, graph and table work, accounting through excel, picture moving operation through power point, slide show and sound and music ad work are matters of minutes to him.
Roopkatha can edit any picture in photo shop easily and insert the character of one game into another by changing information. He can install gaming software on computer after downloading from internet. Besides, he also can install various software and games in the PC from compact disc (CD).
Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Service (BASIS) accorded a reception to Roopkatha recently as a youngest computer programmer.
"I must say from the technological point of view that Roopkatha is definitely a wonder baby. I am amazed knowing the time and energy he dedicates to this complex programming, " said Aksadur Rahman, programmer and project manager of MediaSoft.
Roopkatha's businessman father Wasim Farhan and mother Risha hope that their son would become a great programmer in future and introduce a new episode in the cyber world.
