http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/07/17/MN16518.DTL Pakistani Whiz Kid uses PERL Like a lot of tech-savvy teenagers, Faisal Nasim was reading programming books before he started high school, designing Web pages a few years later and is now drawing a salary from a Silicon Valley business. The difference is that Faisal lives in Karachi, Pakistan. There are no computer classes at his school, so an uncle in England had to send him programming books. And he made his first visit to a Palo Alto client just last week. When he leaves today, the self- taught 16-year-old will return home a bit more worldly, having toured landmarks like Hewlett-Packard Co., Stanford University and the Golden Gate Bridge. Despite his tech wizardry, Faisal still has much in common with others his age. His favorite stop on the itinerary: Paramount's Great America theme park in Santa Clara. ``It was great, really great,'' he said, breaking into a wide grin. Faisal came to Palo Alto courtesy of his employer, Joel Rosenberg and his wife, Katie. Faisal's parents gave the OK after Rosenberg sent them a letter and pictures, and had Faisal's relatives from Southern California chaperone Faisal his first two nights in Palo Alto. Rosenberg, 61, a former high school teacher, runs a business called Max Traffic from his home. It helps Web sites improve the way they interact with search engines to bring more visitors to the site. Two years ago, Rosenberg was in the middle of a programming problem and posed a question on an Internet bulletin board specializing in PERL (Practical Extraction Report Language) hoping for help. He got a detailed answer from someone named Faisal a few weeks later, and they chatted back and forth with follow-up questions and answers. Rosenberg said he was ``ecstatic'' to have the help and asked if there was anything he could do for Faisal, figuring he was a programmer in Silicon Valley who might like a gift book for his troubles. When Faisal said that he was 14, Rosenberg was stunned. ``The level of detail in his response was so great,'' Rosenberg said. It was nothing to Faisal, who said answering such questions was just something he did for fun after school. ``I had the time, and it was easy, for me at least,'' he said. For the past two years, Faisal, who goes by the name of ``whiz kid'' when responding on Internet bulletin boards, has been doing most of the programming for Rosenberg's company. He said that it comes naturally and that he took up computers at age 6, after watching his father, a mechanical engineer, doing programming on a home computer. Some whiz kids garner international fame. Rishi Bhat, 16, of Chicago, is a millionaire basement programmer who helped create SiegeSoft.com and myEdesk.com. In Uppsala, Sweden, Jonathan James, 19, helped the FBI trace the Melissa computer virus last year. But Faisal is not interested in money or fame. He makes $300 a week, and that is at Rosenberg's insistence. Faisal is not enamored of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs and hasn't thought much about starting his own business yet. He said he has been accepted by Leeds University in England and has applied to Cambridge, but would like to go to Stanford some day. For now, he is still trying to be a kid, which also comes naturally. He was pleased to find he could watch the Cartoon Network cable channel at the Rosenbergs' house, just as he does at home. Faisal was having fun last week working one-on-one with his boss, whose voice he had never heard, despite two years of e-mail chats. He was also looking forward to an outdoor barbecue, so he could try grilled chicken with barbecue sauce. There was one other meal he wanted to savor. ``Burger King,'' he said. ``Chicken burgers with fries.'' E-mail Carolyne Zinko at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
