A Marvel Unleashed

Photos: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

When you first lay eyes on him, quietly typing codes and scripts away, you will notice his focus and zeal. But there is something different in his countenance. You will somehow feel like he is isolated from the world. But the truth is that, he already has the world in the palm of his hands.

He has his name down in Ripley's Believe It or Not and The Golden Book of World Records. He has been publicized by BBC, Deutsche Welle, Zee News, Hindustan Times, The Tech Journal and many other international and national news agencies. He has flabbergasted some of the most renowned IT professionals from around the world. He has a chapter dedicated to him in English for Today textbooks for Class 8 students. And he still continues to dumbfound anyone whose path crosses his.

Born on January 27, 2006, Wasik Farhan Roopkotha is nine years old, and he is the youngest computer programmer in the world.

"When he was just a couple of days old, we noticed that he chose to always be around the presence of a computer. We found it odd, and tried to keep him away in case it harmed his eyesight. But our efforts were in vain. He wouldn't leave the computer's side," says his mother, Cynthia Farhan Risha.

Roopkotha, since then, has formed a relationship with technology that was unbreakable and unmatched. He began using the computer, learning, by himself, the basics. Soon learning to type before learning to walk, his mother was amazed at how much he managed to teach himself in a span of just two years of actually being alive. By then he had completed games such as Age of Empires, Need for Speed and Star Defender, and had also learned to create folders, install software and make graphs and tables. He had also taught himself to write properly constructed sentences by then. "Roopkotha was never admitted to a school. Everything he has learnt, he has learnt on his own. Even we never taught him anything. He would look at words, find the matching letters on the keyboard and type," says Risha.

He had finished over 200 games, including Red Dead Redemption and Modern Warfare 2, by the time he was three years old. He also transformed into a touch-typist by then. He had learnt to edit images in advanced software such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

"Around this time was when Roopkotha had started attracting attention. By the time he was three and half, he was already covered by a number of newspapers and news agencies. They would call him the 'wonder baby'," says his father, Wasim Farhan, a businessman.

When he was merely four years old, he began doing things that really took matters to the next level. "He does things even we adults don't understand. He says things that astonish and confuse us at the same time!" his father laughs. He learnt to develop software using emulators such as Project64 1.7, DeSmuME, QEMU and ePSXe. He began creating animations using PIVOT as well as working on CamStudio and HyperCam. In another additional year, he became proficient in C++. In 2011, the World News Agency recognised him as the world's youngest computer programmer.

The very next year, in April, BBC World News also acknowledged him with the same title. By then, he was an expert when it came to using RPG maker and VMware Workstation, which interested him in multiple operating systems. He soon became affluent with knowledge of and the ability to use various operating systems and programming languages—which are skills still considered advanced for even senior experts. At the same time, he started working on Virtual Box and Parallels Workstation.

He created an entire operating system using SUSE studio in 2013, and by then he had completed playing over a 1000 games. He also developed a knack for editing and creating Wikipedia pages and has a keen interest in cosmology.

He has already developed around 11-13 games using ROBLOX Studio. He also recently finished a horror puzzle game called Risha's Haunted House which he named after his mother. He is now busy developing a 100 episode long first-person shooter game.

"Watching him work on a game is a surreal feeling. He will be using the laptop for coding, and switch swiftly to the desktop to sculpt the game characters, while also referring to YouTube and Wikipedia for information. He spends the whole day with his computer, from morning to night," says his mother, Risha. His first person shooter game is already near the end of making, with an option for 128 players to play with multiplayer, at the same time. The game is to be uploaded online this month, although it will be released on December 25, 2017.

"He doesn't really need school, does he now?" asks his father with a smile. "He has more intellect and skill than university graduates. Without school, he can hone his own skills better. But of course, when it is necessary, I will not hesitate to put him in a school. For Roopkotha, I will make absolutely any sacrifice, any compromise. I will do anything for my son, who has brought me pride and honour from before he could even walk." Roopkotha, though quiet and reserved, prefers keeping a smile on his face with company around, even if his eyes are strictly fixed on the computer. "I want to be better looking, and also work in a big IT firm," he said, "and also I want to find solutions to everyone's problem, help them rid their grievances and build a time machine!"

An innocent child still, Roopkothas dreams are endless, but to some extent, may be possible for him, and only him, to achieve. Risha, with a proud mother's smile, stroking her son's hair, says, "He has already done so much. He may just end up inventing things we simpletons haven't even imagined yet!"

Please check out the Star Weekend's Facebook page for a short video story on Wasik Farhan Roopkotha.