I wish to create a special robot that will be able to help people in need, says Arham Om Talsania, a six-year-old from Ahmedabad, who recently created a Guinness World Record and became the world's youngest computer programmer. Arham wishes to become a business entrepreneur in the future and create loads of video games and even robots. "I love playing the piano during my leisure time. I also love coding a lot," he tells us. The six-year-old is currently busy building his own video games — working on both 2D and 3D versions, a text-based game, all at the same time. He plans to release them pretty soon.
Arham created a Guinness World Record after clearing the Python programming language exam conducted at Pearson VueTest Center by Microsoft on January 23, 2020. The test, which is considered difficult even for aspiring engineers to crack, was cracked successfully by the prodigy. He has also broken the prior Guinness record by seven-year-old Muhammad Hamza Shahzad, a British boy of Pakistani origin.
Arham also scored 900 out of 1000 in the exam to be recognised as a Microsoft Technology Associate. "Arham has always been this inquisitive child who wanted to learn something new each day. He is addicted to playing games on tablet devices but mostly games that involve a lot of brainpower. His hunger for different computing devices was so high that by the time he turned three, Arham ended up using all types of Operating Systems — Android, Windows, and iOS. At the age of five, he already knew all the standard programming apps which children typically learn once they are in Class 6, such as Scratch and Tynker. He was mainly interested in what was happening behind the scenes — how a game is made, how it works, etc," says Om Talsania, Arham's father, who is a software engineer.
Arham saw his father work at home often, especially when he was coding. The six-year-old was quick to ask questions and learnt that games can be made with the help of coding. "He wanted to learn. I started giving him basic training in Python programming and he grasped concepts pretty quickly for a six-year-old. That's his favourite hobby," adds Arham's father.
It was not an easy task to crack the exam and Arham prepared for it on the weekends. "It began with half an hour to one-hour fun sessions, which increased gradually. There were days when he would wake up and say 'I want to build something'. We would spend a lot of time on weekends, sometimes from morning till evening as he began creating small programmes, games. There was no specific preparation meant for the exam but building games, programmes, learning basics became the part of the process. Because my wife and I are both engineers and he asked about our certificates, we thought he can give the exam a try," explains Arham's father.
Arham's school, Udgam School for Children in Ahmedabad also had an important role to play in the six-year-old success. "Udgam has programmes like LogIQids, which introduces the concept of logical reasoning to the students from senior kg. The school uses online platforms like Extramarks and Microsoft Teams that introduces kids to enterprise-class computing. Using these programmes as a 1st-grade student really opens up a child's exposure technology," concludes his father.
