Live data from Hacker News

Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

economist.com

121–130 of 285 posts

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

There are quirks to speaking with developers or workers in India who haven't also been trained partly in the US or Europe. A scattered assortment of unusual phrases or idiosyncrasies you may hear: -- "please revert at the earliest" -- Using the non-standard 10,000 base comma system when expressing numbers, versus 1,000 standard -- A tendency to use abbreviations or acronyms which are not commonly understood, even by…

I once was late for a meeting because it was "preponed" – I heard "we are ...ing the meeting" and assumed it was going be pushed to a later date.

Not even angry. It's a great word.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

There are quirks to speaking with developers or workers in India who haven't also been trained partly in the US or Europe. A scattered assortment of unusual phrases or idiosyncrasies you may hear: -- "please revert at the earliest" -- Using the non-standard 10,000 base comma system when expressing numbers, versus 1,000 standard -- A tendency to use abbreviations or acronyms which are not commonly understood, even by…

Do the needful is such an awesome expression! I wish it were standard worldwide. I enjoy it a lot more than "do what's needed" or "do what you need."

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get what you pay for. That holds true everywhere.

Umm... 20$ an hour, meaning 3200$ a month, would be quite a nice salary in a lot of Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, ...). You get people with BAs or MAs in comp science who have been developers for 2-5 years. While I'm sure some will say that 3.2k is ridiculous in country X, I personally met people in all of the above countries working for less while being more experienced.

The developer you're getting from the big IT consultancy is likely getting only 15-20% of what you're paying for him.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

I think either is ok depending on your intention: codes is to suggest the stuff is plural, countable etc, e.g. you have a Bash script, Makefile and Java project (full of files), this is a set of heterogeneous countable things, hence codes. Code is a "mass noun" implying countability or cardinality is irrelevant, e.g. push the code to github. That said I always remarked Indians says "maths" where I would say "math", a…

UK English also uses plural for maths.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

While what I'll say will surely be controversial and will lead to many down votes, Indian dialect of English is not considered a "standard." As a result, the correctness of something in Indian dialect does not mean it is "proper English" or "correct English". If you go to non-English speaking Europe, most textbooks come from the British Council, and teach British English. If you go to China and a lot of Asian countri…

Textbooks for French teach Parisian French, the kind standardized by the Académie française. Does this mean that Québécois is wrong? Does this mean that when the Swiss say “septante” we should correct them and say “Ce n’est pas septante, c’est soixante-dix.”

The fact that we teach French according to the Académie française and teach Spanish according to the Real Academia Española is just due to the political power of those institutions, as any linguist will tell you.

These divisions, that American English and British English are “standard” and other versions of English are “non-standard” are based in colonial sensibilities and steeped in racism—the same reasons why AAVE is seen as inferior, or Haitian Creole.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

I think either is ok depending on your intention: codes is to suggest the stuff is plural, countable etc, e.g. you have a Bash script, Makefile and Java project (full of files), this is a set of heterogeneous countable things, hence codes. Code is a "mass noun" implying countability or cardinality is irrelevant, e.g. push the code to github. That said I always remarked Indians says "maths" where I would say "math", a…

Indian English has “maths” because it is closely related to British English, which also uses “maths”.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get what you pay for. That holds true everywhere.

Umm... 20$ an hour, meaning 3200$ a month, would be quite a nice salary in a lot of Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, ...). You get people with BAs or MAs in comp science who have been developers for 2-5 years. While I'm sure some will say that 3.2k is ridiculous in country X, I personally met people in all of the above countries working for less while being more experienced.

I guess that is the reason why there is interest in outsourcing to Eastern Europe. Case in point being EPAM Systems. Indian IT consultancies might have huge operations but they are not the only show in town.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m American, this is just my take on it. I don’t think fish / fishes is quite right. Look up “code” in the dictionary and you get at least two different senses of the word: 1. System of substituting letters/words/symbols/etc. for letters/words/symbols/etc, e.g. “morse code”. Countable noun. 2. Computing program instructions. Uncountable noun. This is not like fish / fishes, because “fish” is countable—I can have one…

"When referring to more than one species of fish, especially in a scientific context, you can use fishes as the plural." [1] It's the same as peoples... [2] [1] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-fishes/ [2] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/persons-people-peoples/

That’s a different sense of the word “fish”.

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nothing wrong or nonstandard with Indian English, as a native US English speaker living in Canada myself. Are you going to claim that Canada uses nonstandard English simply because it's a hybrid of US and UK English with a few phonetic and lexical twists of its own? Or that Scottish English is somehow less legitimate than England's English (the two are quite different) despite Scotland being part of the UK for…

> I see nothing wrong or nonstandard with Indian English, as a native US English speaker living in Canada myself. I try to see it from the perspective of a non-native speaker trying to learn English. If I know no English, and pay for teachers to teach me English, I definitely do not want to be taught Indian English. Not because it's wrong, not because it's $whatever_adjective, but because it will sound incorrect to t…

There’s a difference between “This is the version of English that I want to learn because it is well-respected,” and “I am going to tell you that you are wrong because your version of English is not well-respected.”

Re: Indian IT consultancies struggle against technological obsolescence

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong—“codes” is correct in the Indian dialect of English. This is akin to arguing over whether “color” or “colour” is the correct spelling.

While what I'll say will surely be controversial and will lead to many down votes, Indian dialect of English is not considered a "standard." As a result, the correctness of something in Indian dialect does not mean it is "proper English" or "correct English". If you go to non-English speaking Europe, most textbooks come from the British Council, and teach British English. If you go to China and a lot of Asian countri…

If you scroll through the speech and language settings on your phone, you'll find 'English (India)`. Perhaps give it a shot :)
Post reply on HN