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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?

#181

Post by ihatepython »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #140
ihatepython wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This I feel is why Japanese programmers continue to be utterly inept Ahh. This explains why Perl is so much better than Ruby. Makes sense now.

Was that sarcasm or genuine preference? Either way I'd love to know what drives your opinion in Python vs. Perl!

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.

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

#182

Post by timoth3y »

xrd wrote: post #179
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.…

Tim, as a Mombusho exchange student in Kanazawa (and Rotary before that in Sapporo) your post brought up some great memories of my time in Japan in the 90s. Do you have an email addres? I want to ask you some questions regarding my startup approach with a big Japanese company we are engaging with.

I do. I don't want to post it here. If you go the the disruptingjapan.com site, you'll find it pretty easily.

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

#183

Post by dsr_ »

galangalalgol wrote: post #162
wil421 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are cooking with apples as an ingredient, the skin will often be a textural problem.

If you're eating a fresh apple, it generally isn't an issue.

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

#184

Post by PurpleRamen »

kryptiskt wrote: post #50

Yet 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.

Japanese games usually have a pretty low software-quality. They are full of strange bugs, lacking good UI&UX, are technical inferior to the western state of the art. Even AAA-Games have often insane bad details on non-game-parts. They often compensate this with good or at least different content, but as we are talking here about software, engine-features and -quality do matter.

To name some prominent example: the latest Pokemon-game released 2-3 months ago, is infamous for how bad the graphics were, how many bugs it has(had?) and how bad the performance is. And this is from an old established company, making billions with their games.

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

#185

Post by syntheweave »

csomar wrote: post #102
courgette wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By that definition, Japan has its own software companies too. They are also big in the gaming world. I didn't check the numbers, but I'd bet it's bigger than France. The US has won the Software (ie: not the games, but the core Software market) because it had pocket deep VCs that understood tech. Everything else is secondary. This is of course, my opinion.

Yes, even in games this is the case. Market leadership in gaming followed market investment. Japan had a large manufacturing presence in games from early on which propelled the corresponding software industry. And the US was pioneering in funding pure software businesses - gaming became part of Silicon Valley's VC pool in the 80's. In other countries, they faced difficulty raising the capital needed to grow as productions got bigger in the 1990's, and mostly got absorbed by US investment, either through acquisition or talent poaching. Ubi was a rare exception to this trend.

I'm pretty sure a story similar to this was playing out throughout the software world.

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

#186

Post by johnwalkr »

rippercushions wrote: post #11

I don't disagree with much of the story, but there are other factors too. A big one is that due to the complexity of the Japanese writing system, PCs never went mainstream: the older generations survived with handwriting, faxes and dedicated word processors, and the newer ones jumped right to mobile phones, meaning the PC hacking generation of the 70s and 80s that kicked off the dot-com boom was much smaller than in…

I don't think this is a big barrier, except for the fact that Western computers didn't have good support for Japanese from the beginning. Earlier, heavier adoption of PCs might have changed the course of history, but at the time it would have been difficult to choose a 286 with DOS vs one of the Japanese computers.

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

#187

Post by bitL »

Dalewyn wrote: post #77

Speaking 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…

The same holds for Germany. Beside the "no pain no gain" attitude, the pursuit of "perfection" leads to weird outcomes. For example, the music band Kraftwerk dissolved because half of the members wanted to make sounds that looked "perfect" on an oscilloscope and not how good they sounded.

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

#188

Post by willbudd »

ihatepython wrote: post #181
bakuninsbart wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that sarcasm or genuine preference? Either way I'd love to know what drives your opinion in Python vs. Perl!

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... :)

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

#189

Post by HPsquared »

Dalewyn wrote: post #77

Speaking 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…

In other words, craftsmanship is valued over profitability.

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

#190

Post by steve1977 »

bitL wrote: post #187
Dalewyn wrote: post #77

Speaking 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…

The same holds for Germany. Beside the "no pain no gain" attitude, the pursuit of "perfection" leads to weird outcomes. For example, the music band Kraftwerk dissolved because half of the members wanted to make sounds that looked "perfect" on an oscilloscope and not how good they sounded.

I guess there's a reason why Japan is often called the Germany of Asia.
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