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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?

#371

Post by sinuhe69 »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #193

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.…

I think both attempts of explanation are valid. While the risk-adverse and face-losing-adverse traits of the Japanese culture can explain the (in general) slow development and response of Japanese companies (not limited to software), they cannot explain the quirky, often ugly and not user friendly UI of Japanese software. Germans are a bit risk-adverse, too, though not comparable to Japanese, their software, especially enterprise software are showing the same rigid UI and in general difficulty to use. In fact, you can not use them without reading the manual or being trained and that is expected from the end users, too! In a stark contrast, user-oriented software today are very intuitive, offers pleasant onboarding thus every user can use them casually. The rigid and unfriendliness of Japanese and (German software in some degrees) can IMO only explained through the long isolation of the mass market as Romeo outlined in his podcast.

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

#372

Post by midoridensha »

unity1001 wrote: post #335
PsycheOS wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absentee leadership with no understanding or care to monetize it - including the pricing on the first Xerox Computers. Also many deca billion dollar spinouts from Xerox Parc: 1. SGI / silcon graphisc based on Jim Clarke's work on 3D chips. 2. 3Com / ethernet based on Bob Metcalfe's work. 3. Adobe based on John Warnock and Charles Geschke on vector graphics and printing. etc.

> Absentee leadership with no understanding or care to monetize it Its not that. Its that pushing digital photography and other stuff and monetizing them would kill their existing business. However you look at it, its a risk.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but I feel like it should have been fairly obvious that computers were the future, and their existing business (photocopiers) wasn't exactly going to die, but it was going to become less important as digital documents because normal. We still have photocopiers today, after all, though now they're integrated with digital printers and scanners: people still use paper documents, just in different ways than merely copying them. Someone more far-sighted should have seen this, and seen the value of their PARC work. Obviously, someone there at Xerox did, or else why did PARC exist in the first place? So somehow, they managed to have the vision to enable spending tons of money on this research center and the brilliant minds there, but then the higher-ups were too stupid to actually do anything with all that research. It really doesn't make sense to me.

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

#373

Post by TMWNN »

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…

>Perhaps people that come from minority spiritual communities have to "think different?"

Christians are only 1% of Japan, but eight prime ministers have been Christian! https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/a-chr...>

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

#374

Post by Firmwarrior »

midoridensha wrote: post #370
Firmwarrior wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, she just doesn't like the way things work here, and she's scared to learn to drive The service in the SF Bay Area is really amazingly dismal. It's embarrassing every day to be an American living here. People at restaurants, stores, etc are all angry and stressed out. I'm hoping I can convince her to move somewhere else in the USA with me, since it'll be a lot easier to find some remote work in my same time zone

Somewhere else will still require driving for every little thing, because that's how America is. If you want to live a car-free lifestyle, America is simply impossible outside of Manhattan, NYC, but it's commonplace in any larger Japanese city. And Americans are all angry and stressed out everywhere else in America too. It became a really miserable place to live in my experience during the pandemic, so I was really g…

Well, we've had pretty decent luck with Utah, Florida, Texas, and other parts of the US lately when traveling. The service isn't on par with Japan, but they're nice at least.

I'm hoping I can convince her to learn to drive.. Although if we move near my friends and family, I could just have one of my minions drive her around every day

Hopefully I can work out a way to earn $8k a month or so doing something online. Then I could maintain residences in Tokyo and the non-HCOL part of the USA, and pop back and forth occasionally.

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

#375

Post by Firmwarrior »

midoridensha wrote: post #368
dagw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the experience of people I know, the 'easiest' way is to get hired by a company in the US (or wherever you are) that has a significant Japanese branch, work there for a while, and then ask to get transferred. But be aware that even 'better' working conditions can be much worse than you are used to.

That's a big long shot. The easiest way is to simply get a job at a Western or internationally-focused company here; that's what I did. If you're an experienced software engineer, there's lots of companies looking for English-speaking engineers.

Ah, I've been hunting around, and can't seem to dig up any jobs paying over 20M JPY/year..

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

#376

Post by TMWNN »

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.…

>> 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. So, expectations of Japan were much higher.

Indeed. Read any US computer magazine c. 1980 +- four years, and the one assumption/expectation in the background of every article discussing the industry is that the "Japanese are coming". This belief directly caused several things to occur in the US industry, notably Commodore's pivot from a seller of high-priced desktops sold to schools and European companies to a focus on low-priced home computers starting with the Commodore 64.

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

#377

Post by midoridensha »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #374
midoridensha wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere else will still require driving for every little thing, because that's how America is. If you want to live a car-free lifestyle, America is simply impossible outside of Manhattan, NYC, but it's commonplace in any larger Japanese city. And Americans are all angry and stressed out everywhere else in America too. It became a really miserable place to live in my experience during the pandemic, so I was really g…

Well, we've had pretty decent luck with Utah, Florida, Texas, and other parts of the US lately when traveling. The service isn't on par with Japan, but they're nice at least. I'm hoping I can convince her to learn to drive.. Although if we move near my friends and family, I could just have one of my minions drive her around every day Hopefully I can work out a way to earn $8k a month or so doing something online. The…

>Although if we move near my friends and family, I could just have one of my minions drive her around every day

Is she some kind of slave or something? Being in a place where you can't get around by yourself is not much fun, and doesn't feel very free. I can totally see why she wants to come back to Japan; you don't have to live that way here, and can easily get around almost anywhere (except the countryside) without a car. It's a totally different way of life, but it's something that most Americans I've found simply cannot comprehend at all. They simply cannot imagine life without a car (or a gun).

>Hopefully I can work out a way to earn $8k a month or so doing something online.

Good luck with that; most WfH jobs won't allow working internationally because of the taxation issues, though I suppose you could lie and just use your US address, though the company might notice that you always work through the middle of the night and have an issue, but I really don't know. I know digital nomads do exist; it's not much of a thing in Japan because there's no working visa that allows this, but a spousal visa probably would.

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

#378

Post by midoridensha »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #375
midoridensha wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big long shot. The easiest way is to simply get a job at a Western or internationally-focused company here; that's what I did. If you're an experienced software engineer, there's lots of companies looking for English-speaking engineers.

Ah, I've been hunting around, and can't seem to dig up any jobs paying over 20M JPY/year..

20M/year is a huge salary in Japan. If you're looking for American salaries, you will only find those in America. The cost-of-living outside America is generally lower and life is lower-risk (no medical bankruptcy), so you don't need as much money, plus people outside America don't demand and expect to own giant McMansions.

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

#379

Post by ihatepython »

willbudd wrote: post #188
ihatepython wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not exactly sarcasm but a snarky way to say that Ruby was written by a Japanese programmer, so he can't be completely incompetent. Perl is my preference of the three (Perl, Python, Ruby). I agree with 'There Is More Than One Way To Do It', and disagree with 'There Is Only One Way To Do It'. And Perl has the best support for regular expressions. Ruby is OK, but I learned Perl first, so it feels more natural.

> And Perl has the best support for regular expressions. To me this sounds a bit like driving to a supermarket three towns away because it has the best selection of coffee filters... :)

Well to be honest, I have driven more than an hour to go to my favorite Italian deli and get my favorite sub sandwich, so it fits my personality

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

#380

Post by ihatepython »

satvikpendem wrote: post #298
ihatepython wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not exactly sarcasm but a snarky way to say that Ruby was written by a Japanese programmer, so he can't be completely incompetent. Perl is my preference of the three (Perl, Python, Ruby). I agree with 'There Is More Than One Way To Do It', and disagree with 'There Is Only One Way To Do It'. And Perl has the best support for regular expressions. Ruby is OK, but I learned Perl first, so it feels more natural.

Why do you hate Python? And what is your opinion on Nim, Crystal, Rust etc?

I don't know exactly why, but whenever I write something in Python I get extremely irritated. I'm always worried that I'm going to clobber the namespace somehow. Some functions like 'str' are extremely short and common, and happens to be a variable I always use for temporary variables. The forced indentation messes up the code when I want to debug something by commenting out a bunch of lines.

But sometimes there is a builtin module that makes something easier to do, so I am faced with a 'Kobayashi Maru', a no-win situation

I've never used Nim or Crystal. Rust is too complicated for me to bootstrap and not particularly compatible with older architectures as far as I remember (I believe had trouble with compiling 32-bit)

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