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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#341

Post by mnouquet »

hef19898 wrote: post #155
csunbird wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question needs to be asked here is: Why there is a shortage of developers in Germany, while people having access to free education? One reason is that I can be paid three times more in the US, and with the extra disposable income, I can live a better life, even without the legal protections. Second reason is that, why should the kids even bother studying computer science for 4-6 years to earn 3k per month? A plum…

A plumber needs formal education, at least in Germany. Three years of it, to be exact. And then some more to run his own shop. Also, 100 an hour sounds great. That is without taken taxes, social security, operational costs, fix costs an so into account. Those plumbers getting wealthy are running their own shops, small legit enterprises. Final note: Any decent developer job I know of pays at least 3k, net, after taxes…

> A plumber needs formal education, at least in Germany. Three years of it, to be exact. And then some more to run his own shop.

Here's Europe's problem.

The same way you don't need 5+ years university education to put together whatever piece of hardware / software together, the same way I don't need studying hydraulic to put together hydraulic implements.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#342

Post by mnouquet »

game_the0ry wrote: post #144
sdevonoes wrote: post #89

> For one, we lack the imagination and vision to launch something without knowing how it might eventually make money I don't think there is lack of imagination. The biggest barrier for any person who wants to launch something is: paperwork around establishing a company. In some countries you have to pay every month some amount of money if you want to be a freelancer, in others you need to setup a sole proprietorship,…

> Also: being a software engineer/computer programmer in Europe is not as sexy as it is in USA. It's getting better, yes, but here the "engineer" is the last monkey. Managers and sales are the ones who get the credit. So, European mentality also plays a role here. Eventually those manager and sales people will learn that they need developers to build stuff, or else they can't manage anyone because nothing has been bu…

> Eventually those manager and sales people will learn that they need developers to build stuff

The "bourgeoisie" never really figured out they needed workers to run the mines...

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#343

Post by mnouquet »

cletus wrote: post #154
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being comfortable makes you less risk-averse, even lazy Do you mean more risk-averse? Anyway, to comment on this point. Non-Europeans, get quite a few things mixed up. >We all joke on here about Europe with its 6-8 weeks of vacation, 35 hour work weeks, universal health care and a year of maternity of leave to some extent. The bigger problem is two-fold and has to do with your second point: 1. Europeans have very se…

> Do you mean more risk-averse? I do. Thanks. Corrected. > Europeans have very set schedules That's another way of describing conformity, in this case to cultural norms. The best way I can describe it is like this: in the UK (and the US), the default position is that things are allowed unless they're specifically forbidden. In continental Europe, it's the reverse: everything is disallowed unless it's specifically per…

> The best way I can describe it is like this: in the UK (and the US), the default position is that things are allowed unless they're specifically forbidden. In continental Europe, it's the reverse: everything is disallowed unless it's specifically permitted.

Only in rural North America, otherwise, everybody has the mentality as the Europeans. Otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree. Europeans don't know the meaning of the word "Freedom".

The only difference with the Uber and such is that people have no fear to break the Law.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#344

Post by mnouquet »

MisterPea wrote: post #294
cletus wrote: post #99

Hot take: the problems here are cultural. Consider these data points: 1. The US is a country of migrants (ignoring the blight of slavery for now), whether those be those seeking a better life from Europe originally, later China and later still Central and South America. These are all people who uprooted whatever lives they had and legally or illegally migrated to the US. IMHO you still see echoes of this "pioneering"…

What's interesting is that India (which has many languages throughout the country) pretty much adopted English as the de facto business language. Are EU countries not the same? Genuinely don't know how English is perceived in these countries. Although this is probably much easier for India since it is one country.

> Are EU countries not the same?

Do you mean 21 voices each with their own culture and chauvinism ?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#345

Post by orthoxerox »

hef19898 wrote: post #155
csunbird wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question needs to be asked here is: Why there is a shortage of developers in Germany, while people having access to free education? One reason is that I can be paid three times more in the US, and with the extra disposable income, I can live a better life, even without the legal protections. Second reason is that, why should the kids even bother studying computer science for 4-6 years to earn 3k per month? A plum…

A plumber needs formal education, at least in Germany. Three years of it, to be exact. And then some more to run his own shop. Also, 100 an hour sounds great. That is without taken taxes, social security, operational costs, fix costs an so into account. Those plumbers getting wealthy are running their own shops, small legit enterprises. Final note: Any decent developer job I know of pays at least 3k, net, after taxes…

3K net is not that much. The whole point of working in IT in the US is that you shoot into the upper middle class levels of compensation. You are no longer a peer of a shopkeeper or a public official, you are now next to doctors and lawyers. You no longer have to balance your monthly budget, you manage your savings.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#346

Post by lioeters »

pkaye wrote: post #330
PaulHoule wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unless I'm mistaken Amtel was founded in the US. However the AVR was developed in Norway.

> Atmel Corporation was founded in 1984 by George Perlegos, a Greek-American computer scientist. Atmel was an acronym for “advanced technology for memory and logic”.

> In 1996, Atmel formed a design team in Trondheim, Norway to develop the Atmel AVR line of RISC microcontrollers. This team combined technology of former students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology with Atmel's expertise in flash memory. ..The AVR chip is the basis of most Arduino open-source development boards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmel

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#347

Post by dvdkon »

logicalmonster wrote: post #232

I think the author's reasoning that the entire continent of Europe lacks imagination was a major weakness of this article, and perhaps unintentionally some kind of -ist or -ism. Anecdotally, many of the brightest American software developers I've met hail from Europe: UK, Greece, Russia, Serbia, Italy, etc. I can go on and on and think of many geniuses I've had the privilege to work with. The question that people sho…

As far as I know, there wasn't ever any law mandating banners for any and all cookies, it was for (frankly poorly defined, GDPR somewhat fixed that) non-necessary cookies. But nobody's going to put "Do you want to be tracked? Y/N" banners on their site.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#348

Post by hardolaf »

wyager wrote: post #328
hardolaf wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that statement made zero sense by the other person. Sure, on paper, us Americans at the median have more money. But after you pay for a single visit to the ER or urgent care, or after you have a kid, or any expenses, Western Europeans are far better off. I know, I've been near that income level before. It's not a fun experience over here. That said, now that I've moved into a job that pays at least $225K per ye…

Most Americans have employer provided health insurance. Fewer than 10% have no health insurance. Hardly anyone is paying out of pocket. > we need to completely restructure our society in the USA The specific primary reason the USA is rich is that we’ve resisted the temptation to do harebrained projects like this.

Most Americans pay a shit ton of money before their insurance kicks in to pay for the majority of their non-preventative care. I personally need to spend $3,000 before I only pay 10% of the bills that insurance receives until I hit $6,000 in a calendar year after which I pay nothing else.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#349

Post by jiofih »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #84
jiofih wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t agree? A more substantial comment would be informative. Can you give us one example of a stellar open source UI you use daily?

Firefox is roughly as good as any other browser, which is to say it does some things better and some things worse, and many things roughly the same. Blender is one of the 2 or 3 dominant tools in its field. It's a niche field, so it's not for office work, but is nevertheless an incredible tool by any standard. For almost anyone's purposes, LibreOffice is better than any closed source equivalent tool (though some of t…

These are powerful tools, but Blender and LibreOffice are also perfect examples of “clunky” open-source. They’ve never had the kind of polish that makes software great to use.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#350

Post by hardolaf »

WalterBright wrote: post #303
hardolaf wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason the US has freely flowing funding is because the VC has an immense amount of cash from the previous generations of successful Unicorns. So why was it (and still is) easier to raise unicorns in the USA ? You're ignoring that all of this money initially came from massive investment by the Defense Advanced Projects Administration (DARPA) which funded the semiconductor industry in its infancy, which funded t…

Apple was funded by DARPA? I don't think so.

Apple was a zombie before Steve Jobs was rehired. Also, it was initially funded by Mike Markkula who was from Intel which was a company founded with DOD and DARPA backing.
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