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A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?

disruptingjapan.com

271–280 of 408 posts

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

#271

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…

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but your comment seems to imply that the US directly intervened/prevented the Japanese from making their own operating system.

Curious, I read the wiki page and if I'm reading it correctly, at the time DOS was already dominant in Japan and TRON/BTRON being incompatible with it made it economically unviable, which is the main reason why it was cancelled as a national standard.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project

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

#272

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…

France had more than ok software company. Bull for instance. Ubisoft and a bazillion other video game company. Alcatel / Lucent / Thales for industrial stuff. For the deepness of my ass I would say failure was tree fold : - France like a good old top down approach. That … mostly don’t work for software. - France decided to listen to our American friends and sell the familly heirloom to the market. ( I’m bitter on thi…

> - France like to do it the “right” way, and that is, of course, the French way.

Having a national identity seems to be a double-edged sword. Brazil's soccer team, for example, is expected to win the Brazil way, dance, samba, which even for professionals may be a subconscious distraction from seeing a particular game situation clearly.

All this talk about why the U.S. is better at producing software could someday turn into the same burden.

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

#273

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.…

True. Also, in Japan, you cannot argue with your manager. There is a very strict hierarchy.

Another posible reason, very few people in Japan speak English (at least that was the case when I worked there in the 90s). That might have affected international penetration of their software. Perhaps this is why we don't see much software from Germany either.

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

#274
post #257
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked for Japanese companies several times in the eighties and nineties and this was definitely a thing. We were an American division and yet we couldn't even get source code or art for the game we were supposed to be making for them. This continued when I worked for a Japanese video card company. They had good programmers but they jealously guarded their code even from other Japanese programmers in the same co…

I'll also speak to 'elitist' of the top comment. One of the first times I had felt prejudice was when I wrote a very good piece of code for their video card which accelerated some video processing by 4X or more. Seriously they (the Japanese) were surprised and started treating me like a miracle talking dog as they just couldn't seem to get their mind around me being able to figure out their systems and contribute som…

Alternatively maybe they just didn't think a 4x speedup would be possible? Or their internal culture discouraged people making improvements to code they didn't originally author? Or they thought you did impressive work?

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

#275
post #192

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…

This is the current failure mode of many automotive companies. As institutions they see software as something you sprinkle on top of hardware platforms using a process optimized for hardware.

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

#276
Speaking of Japanese cloud computing, years before Amazon created AWS, Japan had the NTT cloud. We used it for about a decade. At first it was terrific, but near the end it was becoming unreliable. Our hypothesis is other cloud providers were siphoning off NTT’s best cloud engineers.

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

#277

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.…

What about video games and Nintendo? There are also specific names that like Miyamoto and Sakurai that come to mind who rose up.

That's a good point that leads to another claim, and I don't think those are exceptions at all; Nintendo and its products is quintessentially Japanese if we didn't focus on the payload content bundled in their software. CEO always in suits and shows fatherly smiles at most, the OS not allowing browsers or sideloading, the corporate having zero hesitation suing modifications on first sight, etc. They are completely in line with the rest if not leading the puck.

And I have an explanation: Japanese education imprints and emphasizes for the whole duration of it that work is strictly for community goals, education is for learning officework punctuality and not for skills, and fun at work is nothing but slacking[0]. Some attribute those to agricultural tribalism; I don't know, but I think these imprinting statements fits behaviors describe in GP and of Nintendo(et al.).

"Move fast and break things" would be just display of laziness, ease of use would be just enablement for saboteurs, iterative design would be just poor planning, under this thinking. UI improvements based on subjective individual opinions would be considered an attitude incompatible with the concept of work, especially for business applications. No wonder that GP runs circles around others when the impediment is in individual successes that products offer users, which the whole culture is united to always look firmly away in all professional settings.

This become less apparent in games and gambling because business goals just happen to align with joy and ease of users, hence Nintendo seems unaffected from consumer standpoint.

0: Such words as "comfort", "efficient", "precise" are used as euphemisms and self deceptions when pursuit of fun or ease cannot be avoided

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

#278

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.…

> We're good at making movies and software.

And high-speed pizza delivery!

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The euro-america centric view in claiming that India failed in software is simply absurd. India has giant software companies powering one of the most advanced governance, finance and business societies and not to mention a major destination for the west to outsource software jobs!

We're not talking about straight failure. There's giant companies all over the world and sure they'll produce software. But the FAANG/MANGA/Whatever acronym for the five/six near monopolies aren't from India. If I'm in Korea and tomorrow I want to use a cloud provider, I won't choose an Indian one short of wanting to market to India. But chances are it will be an US one. That's the gap I am pointing at.

I see where you're coming from but that is a very narrow view only taking into account B2C service type software, and that too for a sample size of you. Not to mention the fact that FAANG hires a ton of Indians

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

#280
post #117
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…

> And I think the answer is the language barrier. This may contribute, but it's not the main issue imo. I've worked with tons of Japanese devs and English didn't hold them back much. Plus look at Ruby, which was all the rage in webdev at one point. It was invented in Japan, and it had better documentation in Japanese than English. Bigger issues for Japan's tech industry in 2023: - Lack of VC/Startup investment (0.02%…

I agree with all of your points except part of the last one. I agree starting a business could be harder than many places especially if there is a language barrier. But I disagree that it's difficult to move to Japan.

It's easy for a company to hire foreigners and get a visa for them. There isn't even a local market hiring test like there is in most countries. If you're skilled enough in the newish points system[1], the process is fast-tracked and you get benefits like your spouse can work without restrictions and you can get permanent residency in as little as one year.

Or you can get an investor visa[2] to start a business. The main requirement is having ¥50M of capital. If you can't swing that you may be able to get a startup visa[3] with relaxed requirements.

The taxes also aren't that high and while salary is much lower than US for tech people, the cost of living is also much lower. If you're coming from Europe to Japan, you'll probably enjoy a similar salary, with lower taxes and much lower cost of living. And slowly, there is a trend for tech companies to allow remote work from within Japan, with occasional visits to the HQ in Tokyo. I know a few people taking advantage of this to move to a low-cost area to live a quiet family life, or be close to skiing or whatever.

[1]https://www.lb.emb-japan.go.jp/Points-Based-Immigration-Trea...

[2]https://www.japanvisa.com/visas/japan-investor-visa

[3]https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/economy/startup_nbp/st...

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