A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by etiennebausson » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 12:59 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #62

The key part to me: > But the rest of the word was moving in a different direction. The rest of the world was moving away from dedicated hardware and towards innovative software running on standard hardware platforms. This piece is about Japan vs the world, but looking at countries other than the US I'm not sure this narrative works. For instance did the UK become a Software behemoth ? France ? Germany ? Brazil ? Ind…

>> Most advanced country have seen a few successes and has a decently sized software development power, but not that much bigger than Japan, and certainly not to the scale of the US. The real story would be to me "the US ate everyone's lunch"

They did. By virtue of being the only advanced economy that didn't need to focus on rebuilding after WW2. They have been capitalizing -rather successfully- on that breathing room since then -be it for the space race or software industry- and the advantage has only grown.

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

#192

Post by simonh » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

rramadass wrote: post #138

IMO the Japanese failed at Software Development because they never thought of it as distinct/different from and more important than Hardware that is used to run it. It requires a certain degree of forward abstract thinking which they unfortunately missed. They then compounded this mistake by staying on it for decades. As an example, in the late 90's i was part of a group developing a Office Software Suite for a Japan…

I think this is on the right track, Japan has a fantastic hardware oriented manufacturing culture, but this can be a serious impediment when it comes to approaching software development. One symptom is that software teams are seen as part of a product line team rather than having their own org.

Famously this was a major issue at Nokia and Blackberry, who institutionally believed that their competitive edge was in the hardware. Device specifications would change late in the product development cycle due to constraints on manufacturing or cost targets, and the software devs would just have to work around it. Adopting software platform, like Symbian at Nokia, was primarily seen as a cost and resource saving move to speed up development using a generic solution.

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

#193

Post by dudeinjapan » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:07 PM UTC

Tim Romero (author of linked podcast) misses the point. Paul Graham has a far better take on this topic: http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html

The problem isn't that Japanese companies "missed" the opportunity to do software at X point in time--the problem is that they are culturally Japanese. Japan is about consensus-based design, there is a high penalty for making mistakes, and individuality/creativity is not valued. 出る杭は打たれる - "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down". Certainly you can develop software this way, but the Silicon Valley model of rapid iteration, "if it doesn't work rewrite it", "move fast and break things", etc. gets you there sooner.

But what about Matz and the Ruby core team, you say? Certainly they are a zany, free-thinking bunch. I attended Ruby Kaigi last year and noticed that most Ruby core team members are hired by domestic Japan-focused tech companies, think Cookpad, Tabelog, etc. They are kept for their HR value to attract tech recruits and allowed to spend all their time on whatever open source project they want. Meanwhile the peons work on the actual product.

Source: I've worked in software in Japan for 15 years; 5 at a Japanese bank and 10 as a CTO of my own company. We run circles around our Japanese competitors.

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

#194

Post by thrdbndndn » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #105

nindalf wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The struggle of a Japanese developer to make an app is greater than that of a primarily English-speaking developer. And yet somehow, Chinese developers manage just fine?

China has more developers that speak English than Japan does and they’re ~all in Shanghai, Beijing or Shenzhen because that’s where the money is. Shanghai is substantially easier to get around with very bad Chinese than Tokyo is with very bad Japanese.

Overwhelmingly majority of dev in Shanghai (or China in general) are still native Chinese. "Easier to get around with very bad Chinese" isn't a factor, at all. Not even rounding error.

China is better than Japan in software development simply because they pay (much) better, which causes more people (esp. more "smart" people) to pursue this career for the money.

And the reason why Japan doesn't pay software dev as well is in the article.

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

#195

Post by wil421 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #174

Cerium wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course that is because Matz is nice.

It's never really occurred to me before, but Matz is Mormon, right? I wonder if that informed his decisions differently than if he were heavily influenced by Buddhist or Shintoist thinking, as the larger population does. It would be fascinating to see if there is any correlation between alternative religions and approaches to software in Japan. Feels like there is a heavy influence of Buddhist thought (mindfulness) o…

Are you saying Buddhist thinking helps SV or hurts Japan? Or both?

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

#196

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

steve1977 wrote: post #190

bitL wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same holds for Germany. Beside the "no pain no gain" attitude, the pursuit of "perfection" leads to weird outcomes. For example, the music band Kraftwerk dissolved because half of the members wanted to make sounds that looked "perfect" on an oscilloscope and not how good they sounded.

I guess there's a reason why Japan is often called the Germany of Asia.

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by Tycho » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

PsycheOS wrote: post #147

skissane wrote: post #128

Bit of history many people are not aware of - in the 1980s, Japan developed its own indigenous operating system, TRON. Towards the end of that decade, the Japanese government wanted to adopt it as a national standard. The US government started threatening trade sanctions, which gave Japan cold feet. (Some accused Microsoft of being behind it, although others insist that’s untrue.) How would have the Japanese software…

Yep. It was to protect Microsoft and ultimately the deep state's surveillance capabilities.

They must love how all the corporations are rushing to run their software on either Amazon, Google or Microsoft cloud.

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

#198

Post by ido » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

PsycheOS wrote: post #144

namaria wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodak invented digital photography. History is full of examples where people and companies couldn't see or capture the huge value of their inventions.

In the case of Kodak (my father used by an engineer there and his neighbor at time Kodak also in charge of digital cameras and was warning about digital cameras in the 1970s) and other incumbents like this ,for the current Csuite there is NO incentive to cannabilize the product and take risks and lose revenues (think film, processing, etc) to prepare for the future. Kodak with digital cameras. Nokia with smart phones…

Nokia made smartphones very early actually (in the 90s), but they were just not very good at it.

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

#199

Post by wil421 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:22 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #162

wil421 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why peel apples? I do cut it in half and take out the core, but that is mostly to be sure there is no Griswald.

I have young kids under 3 who will point out the smallest speck of peels and reject the Apple slice.

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

#200

Post by BlueTemplar » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 1:23 PM UTC

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…

This example is complicated by games also being art and how it can be hard to separate both (even when it's just graphics and audio that you keep on a more closed license).

See how Western games are still overwhelmingly closed source, despite the now known rewards : like Civilization 4 (2005) opening most (but not all) of its C++ (dll) source code, as well as easy to mod XML & Python scripts resulting in a still alive modding scene even today, 18 years later, and after 2.5 (much more restrictive) sequels !