Bob La Quey wrote:
Referencing the subject:
"Where are the software engineers of tomorrow?"
I would be inclined to say, "Not in the USA."
We have a tradition of tolerating *failure* that is hard to beat.
I would argue that quite a lot of our current woes are because we aren't
letting companies fall apart. Instead of supporting companies and
stranding individuals, we should be supporting individuals and stranding
companies.
My reasons are simple. The USA has only a recent history
(roughly since WW II, if one neglects the political giants of
the revolution) of serious interest in intellectual issues.
Programming is intellectual work and is most likely to
thrive in a culture with deep intelelctual roots and
great respect for intellectual work.
You are correct that we don't have a long tradition of purely
intellectual work.
We do, however, have a very strong tradition of practical engineering
and invention. If you didn't, you *died* when you got here. That's a
pretty powerful motivator.
They also have a large population (over 1.1 Billion people)
to draw talent from and a low cost of living so time is
cheap. Intellectual labor takes time. So cheap time is important
to the more creative aspects of the work. One must have
time to think about the puzzles posed.
And huge endemic poverty that we never had. I have seen something like
85%+ of the population in Indian and China does not have even basic
elementary school literacy. That's a lot of people you have to take
care of until they make a switch to a knowledge economy.
The Chinese mandarin bureacracy provides another model for
finding and utilizing large numbers of talented people.
And also for stifling creativity for long periods of time--think about
why Europe bloomed and explored when China, nominally ahead
technologically, just never bothered. Centralized control is good when
it turns in the right direction but bad when it turns in the wrong
direction.
Democracy and capitalism spawn a lot of chaos and waste. That means
that a lot of energy is spent going sideways just to get a small amount
forward. However, it tends to almost always have some forward vector
component even in the worst of times.
What particular advantages does the USA have in this game?
In this day, not as many as it used to. By the same token, it doesn't
have many huge negatives either.
In addition, Richard Florida (author--look him up on Amazon) argues that
the game is no longer played country vs. country. It is played city vs.
city. His arguments are pretty compelling.
-a
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