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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?

#381

Post by ihatepython »

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 if a Japanese person created something like Javascript, it would bring dishonor and shame to himself and his family for 3 generations. Even his grand-children would have to bear the burden.

Therefore, something like Javascript would never emerge from Japan. Only an American would be able to create an abomination like Javascript.

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

#382

Post by powerapple »

midoridensha wrote: post #132
powerapple wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my story with the dish washer: I find it is a lot easier just wash dish as soon as it is used, it does not take more than a few seconds for a plate, and my dishwasher are only used as a place to dry plates. I had thought about the same concept you mentioned here when comparing eastern and western culture, and I thought it might come from diet, but I didn't backup with any research.

Dishwashers make sense if you have a lot of dishes, and make a practice of filling the dishwasher before washing. For a single person, this can take many days. The total amount of water and time ends up being less by using the dishwasher. However, if you have a small number of dishes so that you can't afford to wait 3-7 days between washings, and need to clean them daily, the dishwasher makes no sense.

I choose to wash it immediately after use, either cooking, or after eating. I just find it easy to do. If I keep dishes in the sink, it will accumulate, then I really find no will to wash it. I have thought about why I keep doing this, is it something to do with diet, so I am mentally lazy, but physically not XD

Another thing is I don't like the smell of washing liquid very much, I choose not to use it at all, even when washing dishes with hands

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

#383

Post by unity1001 »

midoridensha wrote: post #372
unity1001 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 dif…

> Someone more far-sighted should have seen this, and seen the value of their PARC work

Even if someone sees that and is somehow able to sell it to the board, that would also need to be sold to the shareholders. And there comes the real challenge. Its not easy to go to shareholders and say that you are going to start a new product line that will kill the profits of another, but ask the shareholders to trust you, because this is going to be the 'thing' of the future. On one side billions of dollars of investments in stocks, backed by a gigantic market held by a flagship product. On the other side predictions of future.

The investors and even the markets wouldnt like that. In a sense, capitalism hampers innovation by providing the wrong incentives.

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

#384

Post by midoridensha »

bamboozled wrote: post #113

One of the key issues of Japanese software is that most companies don't rethink problems and processes to suit software, they try make software around an existing process. Most Japanese companies will just try to automate, or digitize some type of manual process and keep the people involved, I'd say just to hang onto jobs because firing people in Japan is pretty much impossible. Recently while visiting Japan, I tried…

>Recently while visiting Japan, I tried to get a eSIM card... >... Days and days of problems, hours on the phone. ... >... I truly thought I was going to go insane. I didn't leave the hotel for 12 hours

All this just because you just had to try to use a US-spec iPhone 14 Pro instead of getting a phone with a real SIM slot. eSim isn't really a thing in Japan yet, or anywhere outside the US, so support is iffy. Dual-SIM phones, OTOH, are normal and common in Asia. You could have saved a ton of time by just buying a 30-day SIM card at the airport like everyone else. The first time I went to Japan, I just bought a SoftBank SIM card at 7Eleven, popped it into my phone, followed the procedure in the instructions, and within an hour I was set.

For people with iPhone 14 Pro phones from the US, the solution is really simple: just use international roaming. If you can afford the top-spec iPhone, you can afford roaming charges.

>The problems were mostly that I had a middle name, which Japanese people apparently never have

No, they don't. Middle names don't exist in Japan, just like names written in Kanji aren't recognized in the US. Foreigners get around it by concatenating the first and middle names, or dropping the middle name altogether.

>like removes the space between your first and middle name when you put both of them into the first name field.

Why would you put a space into a single name field? Japanese names don't have spaces in the middle; they're single words (one each for first and last name).

>For example, I eventually worked out that I must have a credit card which includes...

Or you can just buy a SIM card at the airport with cash or a credit card (paid by scanning so your name doesn't matter).

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

#385

Post by fomine3 »

unity1001 wrote: post #383
midoridensha wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dif…

> Someone more far-sighted should have seen this, and seen the value of their PARC work Even if someone sees that and is somehow able to sell it to the board, that would also need to be sold to the shareholders. And there comes the real challenge. Its not easy to go to shareholders and say that you are going to start a new product line that will kill the profits of another, but ask the shareholders to trust you, beca…

That's why evolving new company and retiring old company is important. Japan is bad for this.

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

#386

Post by fomine3 »

nottorp wrote: post #163
yokoprime wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! Going back to the 80s, Nintendos developers made top notch software.

Games, and especially console games targeting immutable hardware, are a different world. On a console you control the environment 100% and it simply doesn't matter what you do behind the scenes as long if it works.

And people enjoyed bugs.

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

#387

Post by fomine3 »

astrange wrote: post #309
Laremere wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nintendo does have a pretty strange corporate structure though. A lot of their games are made by separate companies part-owned by Nintendo whose headquarters is coincidentally on a floor of a Nintendo office building. It even applies to their QA department ( https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Mario_Club ).

Such corporate structure is very common in Japanese big company because of how salary decided. Salary was basically decided by age (but it's changing/changed now). Some division like developing (for non-software company), QA, support, are often separated from main company to make salary table different.

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

#388

Post by hbn »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #366
hbn wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is different from those other industries cause it's not really a science. No one's figured out a "right way" to make software, and it seems being well-made is a very small factor in the grand scheme of whether a piece of software becomes ubiquitous/successful. So throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks works better than iterating and perfecting a technique. Video games are a strange exception I supp…

I think video games are the exception that proves the rule. They are software, yes, but due to their primary use being casual enjoyment (as opposed to productivity), being well-made is important for them -- video games have to run well, look pretty, have few bugs, etc. precisely because there's no other reason to play them other than to enjoy them. Meanwhile productivity software offers something else into addition t…

The primary quality of what people consider "well-made" for a video game is the artistic part. Sure, nerds will compare graphical fidelity, resolutions, framerates, etc. but most people just care about whether they're enjoying themselves.

Shadow of the Colossus infamously ran pretty badly on its original release platform (PS2). A good amount of the N64's library ran at sub-20fps in certain areas. Bloodborne launched with 60-second load screens. Hell, remember GTA5's multi-minute loading screens that people put up with until someone reverse engineered the code and found it was mostly pointless JSON parsing? Dark Souls was 30fps on PCs for years (without a mod that caused bugs of its own) until the remaster came out.

There's lots of examples of badly-running and/or ugly and/or buggy games that are still regarded as great.

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

#389

Post by cb321 »

ihatepython wrote: post #380
satvikpendem wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, Nim has various trade offs for you. It has an alternative comment syntax that goes like

    echo 1 #[ deactivated ]#, 2
While `from modA import nil` does exist, it is not very idiomatic. Idiomatic is more managing the global namespace with the type system/overload resolution which it sounds like you would hate. However, shadowing outer scope names with inner scope names (like your `str` example) *is* considered idiomatic.

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

#390

Post by Firmwarrior »

midoridensha wrote: post #378
Firmwarrior wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, you can make 50M or more per year in the USA, so there's no point in working if you're only taking home 20M. You're financially better off working in the US, saving some money, and then being an unemployed hikikomori in Japan for a few years (which is pretty much my plan at this point, haha)
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