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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#311

Post by pfortuny »

dgb23 wrote: post #176
jiofih wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, people now tend to equal consumer services in tech to “innovation”, but if you look closely a disproportionate amount of the real innovation in energy, industry, food production, finance and “real word tech” happens in Europe - because a lot of people have the freedom to do things that matter with their lives and not spend their time being a growth hacker.

I assumed that it was the other way around. Can you point me to further reading?

Philips, siemens, bosch, just three.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#312

Post by WalterBright »

whimsicalism wrote: post #292
mannerheim wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 2013 list, approximately 40 percent of Sweden’s billionaires are self-made while 60 percent inherited their wealth. In the United States, by contrast, 70 percent of billionaires are self-made while around 30 percent inherited their wealth. Once we exclude inherited wealth, the United States has around 1 self-made billionaire per million inhabitants compared to 0.6 for Sweden. https://www.nationalreview.com/t…

50% of all wealth in the United States is inherited by the top 5% wealthiest families. 60% of all wealth in the United States is inherited.

Gates/Allen/Bezos/Jobs/Ellison/Google/Netflix/etc did not inherit their wealth.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#313

Post by grishka »

Nursie wrote: post #67
grishka wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandate that every API version that introduces breaking changes remains available for X years. Big companies do this anyway because there always are people using outdated first-party apps.

> Mandate that every API version that introduces breaking changes remains available for X years. Then you've just crippled the ability to deliver new functionality at a rapid pace without huge associated support costs. no?

No. You didn't read my comment fully. Companies already support app versions that are years old, for various reasons — the most obvious one being that many people use older devices that run an OS that's no longer supported by the app in question, and others just don't ever update anything. So since they're already doing this right now, and have been doing this since forever, there's literally zero additional work involved.

Besides, no one is asking them to "deliver new functionality at a rapid pace", especially to feature-complete products. This whole "keep flapping your wings or you'll die" thing is a lie. It's fine for a product to be done. It's fine to stop. It's fine to go into maintenance mode.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#314

Post by arcturus17 »

kgwgk wrote: post #239
arcturus17 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain was razed to the ground during the Civil War (1936-1939) and people were literally eating cats and rats off the streets so I doubt that any of our current wealth is inherited from our former Imperial glory, aside from maybe some intangible, indirect and minuscule effects such as “historic capital”. To your point, same goes for Germany indeed… Have you guys seen the pics of what cities like Berlin, Nuremberg or…

"Spain was razed to the ground during the Civil War [...] same goes for Germany indeed" I wouldn't say that Spain was "razed to the ground" compared to Germany.

Yes, it is an exaggeration while in the case of Germany it’s literal (though in Spain, a few towns were razed, and many were heavily shelled)

People eating cats and rats off the streets is not an exaggeration however - there is abundant oral testimony to support that.

The point is that the damage hardly justifies talking about economies who live off inherited wealth, in either case.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#315

Post by PaulHoule »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #179

I'm a European, living in Europe, developing software. Lack of imagination is not our problem. It's so good that we supply our best talent to the US where it does extremely well revolutionizing AI, designing hardware for Apple, developing games, stream online music, etc. E.g. Amazon's CTO is Dutch. Basically the person that has been running AWS. The people and the education system are fine. Europe does have a few iss…

My favorite European tech company is Atmel (Norway), which developed the AVR-8 microcontroller which is in the original Arduino (Italian).

Particularly, Atmel made the last 8-bit microprocessor which was just a bit more carefully thought out than everything else on the market and carefully positioned to give a lot of bang per buck.

Atmel got bought by Microchip (San Jose, USA)

Today when I think of Europe I think of those annoying popups which (I think) were a "normalization of deviance" for annoying and harassing UI elements on web sites... I mean, this one is required, virtuous, etc. so it is OK to nag people to get their email address, open a new window every time you click on a search result (Bing) so you'll accidentally click on an ad when handling way too many tabs

There was something anti-user about the GDPR popup that "broke the dam" for other bad practices, as well meaning as it is. It might pour sand into the wheels of the data economy, but it made it impossible to be an advocate of the user in most organizations. (e.g. if you can't reject that one, what can you reject?)

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#316

Post by whimsicalism »

WalterBright wrote: post #312
whimsicalism wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% of all wealth in the United States is inherited by the top 5% wealthiest families. 60% of all wealth in the United States is inherited.

Gates/Allen/Bezos/Jobs/Ellison/Google/Netflix/etc did not inherit their wealth.

Of the top 15, 5 inherited. You are right that billionaires are less likely to have inherited wealth.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#317

Post by stefanfisk »

unknownOrigin wrote: post #256
fvdessen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes far beyond that. If you are in Italy and want to expand to Germany you need to hire german speaking people and that means opening a Sales Office in Germany, and dealing with different labour regulations etc.

And just to add to this, from a certain level (revenue) that's not that high (and depends on idividual states) you need a presence (VAT registration) and a business bank account in the country you're selling your services/goods in, even if you're not actually located there. E.g. a medium sized online shop based in the Czech Republic that is shipping to Hungary. Now imagine this if you're shipping to many EU states...…

none of this is true.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#318

Post by jollybean »

thiago_fm wrote: post #4

This problem will never get fixed. The author forgot to mention in depth the main reason why EU isn't even in the game: culture. In order to be innovative and compete, we need very flexible working laws, people with a big growth mindset, a less relaxing lifestyle and AMBITIOUS people. A lot of third world countries are years ahead of the whole EU continent in that aspect. I say this because I live in Europe for the q…

Developing countries are ahead of Europe and even the US in some very, very narrow things. In some places mobile and online banking penetration.

But to lift up the nation, you need regulations, competence at all levels.

'Google' is a tiny project relative to America. Most countries are 99% about the basic things: roads, bridges, hospitals, carpenters, governance, food etc..

There are enough groups of ambitious people to form networks of that. In Paris and London people move, it's the same in most countries.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#319

Post by kaba0 »

jk3921 wrote: post #127
qsort wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to comment on anything else since "flexible working laws" and "less relaxing lifestyle" can mean anything, but "light a fire under their ass until they are forced to innovate" is unironically and unapologetically good. If there's one thing that consistently fosters innovation and progress it's competition. That's something that holds true everywhere. Software, industry, education, games, sports, you name it…

Its weird really. Europeans do pretty well in sports so its not like they lack drive. Speaking having just watched Djokovic, Nadal et al battling it out.

It’s just blatant overgeneralization by grandparent comment. You can’t really describe a whole continent like that, especially on a very variable human attribute like drivenness.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#320

Post by jollybean »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #12
thiago_fm wrote: post #4

This problem will never get fixed. The author forgot to mention in depth the main reason why EU isn't even in the game: culture. In order to be innovative and compete, we need very flexible working laws, people with a big growth mindset, a less relaxing lifestyle and AMBITIOUS people. A lot of third world countries are years ahead of the whole EU continent in that aspect. I say this because I live in Europe for the q…

> In order to be innovative and compete, we need very flexible working laws, people with a big growth mindset, a less relaxing lifestyle and AMBITIOUS people. The US has those things and it's turning into a "third world country with a Gucci belt" (as someone put it) for everyone except the 1% and the indispensable knowledge worker class that can't be automated away or juiced dry for all the productivity they are capa…

Median wages in the US are still much higher than in Europe and it's always been 'bad' to be at the 'bottom' in the US.

It's been that way for 150 years at least (read the stories of relatively well paid American GI's in UK WW2), no signs of changing just yet.

I wonder if it's a culture problem or a scale problem or both.

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