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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?

#151

Post by sampo »

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…

> Americans manufacture the best apple peelers

My favourite apple peeler is the Jonas peeler from Sweden.

https://www.kitchenkapers.com/products/linden-original-jonas...

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

#152

Post by Semaphor »

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…

One of my favorite pieces of software, EmEditor, is made by a company that was started [0] 1995 in Japan. Though maybe it’s telling that they’ve been headquartered in the USA since 2001 ;)

[0]: https://www.emeditor.com/about/about-emurasoft/greeting/

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

#154

Post by Dalewyn »

Laremere wrote: post #108
kryptiskt wrote: post #50

Yet Japan has had a flourishing video games industry since the 70s starting with arcade games. I would have liked the article to touch on such counterexamples and what is different in their case.

The article/podcast mentions how quality hardware engineering was still valued, and used Nintendo as a specific example of success. Sony was mentioned as being outside the keiretsu system, and afaik Nintendo has never been involved with one either. This also correlates well with my personal knowledge of the industry. Japan has a great track record of game design, but they aren't exactly known for innovation in softwa…

I agree, I think a lot of people here in this thread gloss over the fact that /games/ involve a lot more than just code. There's writing, graphics, music. I'm sure we all agree some of our fondest memories are from Japanese video games. Japanese video games are successful because they are great works of art.

But what we're talking about here is Japan's software industry at large. The majority of software aren't artistic programs, they are programs written to enable someone's productivity. The quality of the code consequently becomes a larger or even the only factor, and Japanese programmers on average really suck at their job compared to their peers from other countries.

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

#155

Post by RicoElectrico »

IYasha wrote: post #125
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…

I'd also note the hereditary love for trade/manufacturing secrets which transformed into adoption of extremely proprietary licensing. Developers prior to ~2015 hardly ever considered publishing their code or even format specs. This secrecy has deep roots and it really annoys and pisses me off. I'm not narrowing down on corporate software - even hobbyists who write "dating games" would never publish code even if it's…

> I can hardly remember an example of FOSS from Japan except for CrystalDiskInfo

FatFs from Elm-ChaN is very popular in embedded systems: http://elm-chan.org/fsw_e.html

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

#156

Post by forkerenok »

Dalewyn wrote: post #97
jfk13 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think starting with a certain complexity a polished product is more of an execution issue than it is of quality of programming.

In my experience, many programmers that are book smart can contribute to great working software, but can also produce crap when left to their own devices ("who cares about UX, look at this slick 3NF data model I fleshed out") or managed incompetently ("We fixed all the bugs that were in our bug tracker, therefore the software must be complete").

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

#157

Post by scotty79 »

IYasha wrote: post #125
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…

I'd also note the hereditary love for trade/manufacturing secrets which transformed into adoption of extremely proprietary licensing. Developers prior to ~2015 hardly ever considered publishing their code or even format specs. This secrecy has deep roots and it really annoys and pisses me off. I'm not narrowing down on corporate software - even hobbyists who write "dating games" would never publish code even if it's…

I think that's the main reason. Copyright and trade secrets stifle software development. Any development really but it's most visible in software development.

Information wants to be free.

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

#158

Post by a_c »

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…

So true. Perfect did indeed become an enemy of good. And good stuff end up being better than perfect.

Two related examples I can think of:

- China skipped credit card to use mobile payment directly as credit card is already perfect for the western world.

- Apple didn't iterate over blackberry, the then perfect phone.

On the other hand, do we count games as software? Japan still produce lots of great game AFAICT, no?

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

#159

Post by wil421 »

sampo wrote: post #151
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…

> Americans manufacture the best apple peelers My favourite apple peeler is the Jonas peeler from Sweden. https://www.kitchenkapers.com/products/linden-original-jonas...

Ha! It’s been a while since I’ve seen that type of peeler. Makes sense that it was popular in the 50/60s my grandparents had one. I recently bought a peeler that I don’t like and I’ll try the Jonas one.

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

#160

Post by timoth3y »

ilirium wrote: post #114
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.…

Hi Tim, thanks for the podcast and the blog post. 1) Could you share examples of bad, good, and open-source Japanese software? Outside of the gaming industry and except for Ruby. 2) Does they have some kind of the hacker culture? 3) May you know links which answer question: Why Europe/Brazil/Turkey/Russia/etc failed to build well-known and international software companies, FAANG-like.

Great questions!

> 1) Could you share examples of bad, good, and open-source Japanese software Outside of the gaming industry and except for Ruby.

"Outside of Gaming and Ruby" cuts out a lot. There is plenty of very good software, but not much that has made it outside of Japan. Nulab has made some cool stuff. I love what Mui Labs are doing with UI.

> 2) Does they have some kind of the hacker culture? We are getting there. I think there are almost two "hacker cultures" in Japan. There are developers who model their lives on the Silicon Vally lifestyle, and there are people who just love programming. The overlap is not as large as you might imagine.

> 3) May you know links which answer question: Why Europe/Brazil/Turkey/Russia/etc failed to build well-known and international software companies, FAANG-like. I'm not an expert in those counties, so I don't have a great deal of insight. During the dot-com book, companies like SAP and Nokia did great, but this time around the US has certainly been the winner in this winner-take-all marketplace.

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