Developing video games will come under software development and Japan has world class video game studios for decades now. Kojima Studios is in Japan
Japan still to this day fails at gaming (see Nintendo)
A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
161–170 of 408 posts
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Americans manufacture the best apple peelers My favourite apple peeler is the Jonas peeler from Sweden. https://www.kitchenkapers.com/products/linden-original-jonas...
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.
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#163Developing video games will come under software development and Japan has world class video game studios for decades now. Kojima Studios is in Japan
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.
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#164One 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…
TBF, middle names cause problems in France too.
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#165Yet Japan has had a flourishing video games industry since the 70s starting with arcade games. I would have liked the article to touch on such counterexamples and what is different in their case.
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…
The example that comes to my mind is that Square hired Iranian-American Apple II expert Nasir Gebelli to program their Famicom games.
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#166Earlier 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.
Are people really leaving dirty dishes in the dishwasher for a week? That sounds like it would smell terrible and anything left on the earlier plates would be dry as cement by then.
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#167Speaking 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…
So true. Perfect did indeed become an enemy of good. And good stuff end up being better than perfect. Two related examples I can think of: - China skipped credit card to use mobile payment directly as credit card is already perfect for the western world. - Apple didn't iterate over blackberry, the then perfect phone. On the other hand, do we count games as software? Japan still produce lots of great game AFAICT, no?
We have to remember that it's the writing, the graphics, the music in Japanese video games that make them great, not necessarily their programming. They are amazing works of art, but unimpressive technical demonstrations.
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but your credit card is "Ella Smith", the "people" won't accept it and their web app does weird things Ha. I live on street with a long but not that long name (18 chars for what it worth). I recently encountered a site what didn't want to accept my address because the full address was way too long . > credit card actually is written as SMITH ELLAMARY And here I am who specifically writes BANK NAME in the CARDHOLDER…
So they were cross checking the name on the card with the name on my passport, apparently they think it's a security check and some how not realizing that: 1. The name on the card is rather arbitrary. 2. Accepting names without spaces isn't really a good check IMO. If you wanted thing to line up exactly, spaces should be accounted for, but who cares? If it feels good... This is a bit of a cultural thing I find common…
> 1. The name on the card is rather arbitrary.
In the US, that is. Other places put the name on your ID on your card :)
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#169Bit 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…
Japan developed plenty of its own operating systems like MSX, PC-98 and DOS/V, none of which went anywhere (outside Japan, that is).
Re: A mistake that killed Japan’s software industry?
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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%…
>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. Ruby has somewhat infamously had a divide between "Ruby programmers" and "Rails programmers". The fact that it was invented in Japan is fairly unrelated to anything about why it succeeded. Ruby took off here due to Rails, and to a lesser degree _why's work way back in…
Ah, good old days where the first step of developing a CGI app in Ruby was creating your own web framework. Rails changed everyhting.