http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30054140

Go little dude!

Kudos to the kid but his parents need a sound talking to. Apart from anything else, these skills will be irrelevant in 15 years time when he's looking to start a life. Right now he needs to be taught general principles and transferrable skills, not specific details on transient systems.

Who's to say he won't keep his skills up to date. He's got a massive head start over everyone else.

Being good at exams does not make him a good technician. There's a lot more than knowing the answers. A trained parrot can tell you E=MC2, it won't know what it really means.

Well, yes, he's got a massive start over other five year olds in a skill set that will be effectively useless by the time he's say ten and that no five year old is ever actually going to need anyway. That's MUCH more worth his time than learning science or mathematics or economics or a foreign language.

Also, I scoff at the notion that he's not going to ever change his mind between five years old and twenty years old about what he wants to do with his life and will spend all the period in between making sure his specifically Microsoft skills are always up to date. That's really going to happen. Or he could decide to be a musician or a doctor or a poet or.. a million other things, all of which will mean that teaching him how to configure IPv6 on a windows 2008 server has been an utter waste of time.

You don't teach five year olds ephemeral vocational skills. It's idiotic.