This is fundamentally an example of the "drunk searching for his keys under the street light" problem: He's getting a wildly inappropriate form of recognition because that's the form of recognition Microsoft has a system for providing.

I had a similar experience with Amazon: I'm an AWS Hero not because I really make sense as an AWS Hero -- the Heroes program lives under Marketing and is fundamentally about helping people drive more customers to AWS -- but because a couple senior engineers said "we need to do something to recognize Colin's FreeBSD/EC2 work" and the Heroes program was what Amazon had in place.

Congratulations! I’m sure someone will add ‘Web’ to your award once you do something useful internet related. Maybe try writing a HTTP tool or something.

> Obviously the program people did not think I qualified for “web”.

this is just really, really funny on a bunch of levels

I can relate. Couple of years ago I was recognized as a Python software foundation fellow. My contributions to the Python community got me the award (I organize Python Atlanta). Has anything changed? Not really. It is listed in my resume but doesn’t make much difference. It has more personal meaning than anything. Feels good to be recognized every once in a while.

Congrats, OP.

I actually got nominated for an MS MVP by Jon Skeet, years ago when I was a front page "C++ expert" on StackOverflow (before it all went pear-shaped). I had to turn them down as at the time I did zero Windows programming, though lots in the past. Jon & the MS guys seemed nice enough.

Clearly he needs to append it to an overly ornate email signature block.

Too bad Microsoft is just a bunch of Ferengi in a trench coat.

Congrats - but let's be honest - most people don't ask and don't care. I have have tens of certs and a few recogs through the decades and every time someone actually see or hear about it or them they're all surprised...

Just go at it for yourself.

Time to drop all those web features

Well, there is a threshold to get these! Even though Microsoft hand these out to a non-significant number of people it is still not an easy feat to get one.

It's a nice achievement to have. Congratulations.

I know I'm wrong, but next step would probably be becoming an Independent Advisor on answers.microsoft.com to show off the MVP badge.

> Obviously the program people did not think I qualified for “web”.

Hahah, classic.

Thank you for all your hard work, Daniel. Otsukare sama desu.

When a profile link for something like this includes a UUID (https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-US/MVP/profile/8ec06c9e-b9d0-4b...) you can tell it's not very personal.

Congrats on the well deserved C++ award!

> I honestly have no idea and I don’t have any expectations. I don’t think it can do me much harm anyway.

Hm, most of Microsoft's MVP seems to be people who never used a conputer. At least that is my feeling after landing on answers.microsoft.com a couple of times.

Grattis!

It's a major award!

Is not curl written in C, lol