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A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

disruptingjapan.com

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Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#91

Post by camtarn »

braingenious wrote: post #63
asddubs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes?

@dang I’d look into this. Edit: There are two accounts that are happy to publicly disagree with me within seconds of eachother, and three-six that are are happy to downvote privately within those same seconds. Maybe I’m magically guilty of having The Wrong Take or there are some people that will kneejerk use their network of accounts to downvote things that aren’t useful to their buddies.

No ... it's really not a giant conspiracy. You're just guilty of being a jerk on a very public website which doesn't take kindly to jerks.

I've downvoted all of your comments on this thread because they are completely unrelated to the subject of the article, and consist solely of a joke spectacularly flying over your head to the point where you're getting aggressive and throwing around conspiracy theories about downvoting rings.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#92

Post by braingenious »

camtarn wrote: post #91
braingenious wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@dang I’d look into this. Edit: There are two accounts that are happy to publicly disagree with me within seconds of eachother, and three-six that are are happy to downvote privately within those same seconds. Maybe I’m magically guilty of having The Wrong Take or there are some people that will kneejerk use their network of accounts to downvote things that aren’t useful to their buddies.

No ... it's really not a giant conspiracy. You're just guilty of being a jerk on a very public website which doesn't take kindly to jerks. I've downvoted all of your comments on this thread because they are completely unrelated to the subject of the article, and consist solely of a joke spectacularly flying over your head to the point where you're getting aggressive and throwing around conspiracy theories about downv…

It’s not huge, it’s just a couple people. (I think, they won’t answer basic questions about posting within a second of one another.)

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#93

Post by 71bw »

mihaaly wrote: post #18

For those reading comments first the story starts in the third paragraph. It could only me but the way it is written obstructs the consumption of the content. Two long paragraph went on before started to talk about the actual topic, after elaborating about how much the author worked and work on it and what is not going to talk about in a stage entertainer kind of inflated manner (the comment "I am not going to waste…

You will consume ze article and leave positive feedback...

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#94

Post by defrost »

timoth3y wrote: post #79

Hi. I'm Tim, the author. I'm delighted to see the interest in this subject on Hacker News and happy to answer any questions. To group and respond to a few common comments: > 1) Is this unique to Japan? Most other countries have not developed world-dominating software industries. That is true, but most other countries did not enter the PC era after spending several disrupting and dominating multiple global industries.…

I'm as surprised as SovietSwag ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321796 ) to see no mention of Japan and Fifth Generation Computing in the 1980s.

It was a big ambitious well backed plan to pursue the silly notion (as if!!) of massively parallel computing with unheard of numbers of cores to jump start AI networks etc.

Are there any stories there on how that all fizzled out and came to naught back in the day?

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#95

Post by sirn »

fexecve wrote: post #20

I disagree with everything in this article post-2000. There were no "software gatekeepers" preventing Japanese software from flourishing on the PC or Mac. I'm not sure what the author is talking about there. So there's still the unexplained question of why Japanese software is still bad, in 2023. And I think the answer is the language barrier. Windows and Mac dominate the world's computer systems, and the development…

Anecdotal: in one of the Japanese companies I've worked at, we had to do a Japanese-speaking-only follow-up after every meeting with the global team, as the majority of the team were relying on a machine translator. Every so often this ended up requiring a follow-up to a follow-up where the local team has questions but unable to ask due to a language barrier. It slowed down the progress considerably.

Another thing I've found particular interesting is that this language barrier also seems to cause some technique or design pattern to be extremely popular among the local developers out of proportion to the English-speaking world. For instance, Clean Architecture is extremely popular in certain industry (e.g., SI). I believe, it was due to the book having a decent Japanese translation, the lack of Japanese-language commentary against it, and the tendency to follow manuals due to social norms.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#96

Post by yawnxyz »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #9

Thanks for this. I'm probably going to have to move back to Japan soon, since the wife is from there and can't handle living in the USA Rather than take an 80% pay cut to partake in the salaryman lifestyle, I'm going to have to start some sort of business. This podcast should have some relevant info, haha

This might be helpful for you (previously found on HN): https://japan-dev.com

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#97

Post by Dalewyn »

jfk13 wrote: post #90
Dalewyn wrote: post #77

Speaking as a Japanese-American, I personally think the biggest problem with Japanese programmers comes down to the Japanese being too crafty and elitist. What do I mean by this? Basically: If you're a wizard at peeling the skin off an apple with your knife you never need an apple peeler; consequently, you never get a good peeler industry going. Meanwhile, Americans manufacture the best apple peelers because they can…

> Japanese programmers continue to be utterly inept That's quite a sweeping statement! Plenty of Japanese programers I know are extremely competent.

I feel that based off my experiences using and interacting with Japanese software. Very frequently, they exhibit exotic bugs and quirks that make me sincerely question the aptitude of the programmers involved.

Maybe the programmers in question are smart as in book smart, but they clearly don't know how to reflect that in practice.

Also, it truly is ridiculous that so many Japanese programs still can't unicode.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#98

Post by camtarn »

braingenious wrote: post #92
camtarn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No ... it's really not a giant conspiracy. You're just guilty of being a jerk on a very public website which doesn't take kindly to jerks. I've downvoted all of your comments on this thread because they are completely unrelated to the subject of the article, and consist solely of a joke spectacularly flying over your head to the point where you're getting aggressive and throwing around conspiracy theories about downv…

It’s not huge, it’s just a couple people. (I think, they won’t answer basic questions about posting within a second of one another.)

Honestly, I normally wouldn't answer a question that sounds like an invitation to an increasingly bizarre thread with a paranoid person either.

I'll be dipping out of this conversation after this reply.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#99

Post by braingenious »

camtarn wrote: post #98
braingenious wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not huge, it’s just a couple people. (I think, they won’t answer basic questions about posting within a second of one another.)

Honestly, I normally wouldn't answer a question that sounds like an invitation to an increasingly bizarre thread with a paranoid person either. I'll be dipping out of this conversation after this reply.

I am glad that you’re not involved in this chat! I wish you well and encourage you to look into the facts I’ve brought up.

Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

#100

Post by 082349872349872 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #77

Speaking as a Japanese-American, I personally think the biggest problem with Japanese programmers comes down to the Japanese being too crafty and elitist. What do I mean by this? Basically: If you're a wizard at peeling the skin off an apple with your knife you never need an apple peeler; consequently, you never get a good peeler industry going. Meanwhile, Americans manufacture the best apple peelers because they can…

If it's any comfort: Switzerland invented* the quartz watch. But swiss watchmakers were too good for that.

* at least according to how swiss tell this story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock#History differs substantially. (but does mention Longines ca. 1966, which may have been how the story I heard arose? In any case, these days Longines has long since been bought by Swatch...)

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