Live data from Hacker News

Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

pulkitsharma07.github.io

31–40 of 158 posts

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#31

I am Indian-American, and while I cannot comment much about the culture of Indians in India, I can comment a bit about the culture of Indian-Americans, especially second-gen Indian Americans like myself. Many of my Indian-American classmates exhibit the behaviors described in this article. For example, in my high school (a magnet program for gifted students), there were several Indian-American students, many of whom…

Does cheating work or are there a bunch of horrible doctors out there? How did they not get filtered out during residency?

Relevant WHO report: https://www.who.int/hrh/resources/16058health_workforce_Indi...

But I am not sure about the accuracy. There are other reports with similar or lower numbers.

Wildly different experience depending on the state and part (South is good in comparison to North).

There is a shortage of doctors despite everyone aiming for a medical degree. It is worse in rural areas so there are less qualified people treating others. Pseudoscience and pseudomedicine is a big industry too. Actors, news channels, babas, politicians, etc all encourage it.

The most recent example of above is baba ram dev's covid cure: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/aug/05/covid-19...

He promoted his pseudoscience on multiple news channels as a cure for covid. Ayush ministry (which is a branch of government to regulate/approve pseudomedicine) stopped him on some advertising basis so he rebranded the thing to covid immunity booster.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#32
post #26
post #10

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source , to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the…

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffi…

> religious values that don't honor ethics

Of course, false religion and immorality go hand in hand, say true religions. Here, false religion is 'Hinduism'; immorality of 'Hindus' makes them not honor ethics. Are we hearing anything new here?

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#33
post #17
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never heard of this syndrome! I think it can be found in Europe as well. The post was really illuminating. I don't know the Indian culture very well, but now I can understand why sometimes Indian resumes are so lengthy, difficult to parse, and essentially filled with air.

Another variant of this is "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." I've usually heard it in reference to Japan, but occasionally other Asian countries as well.

The opposite is "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". It's interesting how both views are opposite and yet both true.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#35
post #26
post #10

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source , to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the…

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffi…

Lol, your comment is one-third highly-biased projection (chaos & competition), and two-thirds pure baloney (religion/ethics, craftsmanship, and hyperbolic generalities) untethered from reality. I don’t think this deserves a point-by-point rebuttal.

India is so diverse that some of the things you’ve said (the one-third that’s not baloney, but highly biased) definitely happens somewhere, but it’s a misleading summary of a country/populace.

For an alternate perspective on what you consider “chaotic”, check out this short talk: https://youtu.be/xKOh9DfQBgU

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#36
post #4
post #2

This is all a very long winded way to say "a popular YouTuber asked teenagers to do something and they did it". Take out all the cultural aspects of it, and an Instagram/TikTok/Twitch influencer doing this here in the USA would have the exact same result, so I'm not sure I buy all the later reasoning.

Wasn't this the same problem in all the previous Hacktoberfests?

Yeah, people have been saying they had the same problem the last couple years. It wasn't as bad, but it was there.

Apparently this year they aren't requiring that the PR gets accepted. It just can't be rejected immediately.

Which means that lots of spam will do the job, where before you had to have a decent PR to get it done.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#37
post #26
post #10

I’ll duplicate a comment I made on another thread today. This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source , to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience to understand the culture and the…

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffi…

>>> religious values that don't honor ethics

Reference for this? I was raised a Hindu still am. I don't and have never condoned cheating. The religion doesn't condone cheating. I smell good ole bigotry in the comment.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#38
A lot of places have societies where culturally the game is about getting ahead of others. You're all together in a society competing for the top spots.

Whereas certain other cultures are more about working together to create an ideal environment for all to be emancipated and enjoy life to its fullest.

Personally, I prefer the latter, as it just seems much more enjoyable and fun to live in such a culture. The former culture is stressful and doesn't really seem to bring as much value out of my life, it feels a lot more artificial in its end goal. Instead of appreciating the time on a planet full of wonders, you spend the time feeling good knowing you beat others and ended on top. I honestly couldn't really find salvation in that goal, on my last day breathing, I'd feel like the king of fools, a fool none the less, and like I just missed out on a life that could have been so much more. But off course that must just show my cultural bias. And I wonder if happiness is cultural, while I would be happier in the latter culture, someone born in the former might be happier in that one. Just something for me to keep pondering about

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you get it. India has a lot of people, some terrible infrastructure, has high amounts of competition, and the idea of craftsmanship is incredibly rare. Their value for life is much lower. There's just too many people. The idea of a pedestrian lights is a tourist thing. They don't pay attention to it. Have 8 rows of cars on the road per each side? How do you cross? You just walk across it during traffi…

>>> religious values that don't honor ethics Reference for this? I was raised a Hindu still am. I don't and have never condoned cheating. The religion doesn't condone cheating. I smell good ole bigotry in the comment.

I'm not hindu, nor would I claim I am. What I've read a long time ago was that there is a god in the religion that promotes that behaviour (it's not about the action of deceiving, it's if the person that was deceived is gullible enough)

I'm going to have to see if I can find it again, or if this is a misunderstanding.

EDIT: I can't find the original statement about the religious values. I've removed it as that I can't find anything to confirm and accept that as it was where I was wrong.

Re: Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India

#40
post #13
post #9

> Somehow Indian parents will become self sufficient, so that children are free to do and discover what they actually want. This bit near the bottom (under "improbable futures") really struck me as necessary, and not just an Indian problem. The pressure to be generally successful and support their immediate family is hard enough on anyone, but adding onto that the pressure to be able to care for your parents when the…

Social nets are also “sacrifices from their children”. Ultimately a morsel of food must be produced around the same time it is consumed, so however we might do the book-keeping and resource apportioning (govt welfare through taxes, charities funded by donations, family obligations, etc), the working population at any time needs to produce the “surplus” necessary to take care of the young and the old. In a society dom…

The current individual approach puts the burden on individuals, and often that burden falls disproportionately on those who can least afford it. Spreading the responsibility around reduces pressure on any one person, and also gets the more fortunate/wealthy in on taking care of society. They've depended on society to enrich them throughout their lives; doing their part to help take care of our aging population should be a cost of doing business.
Post reply on HN