Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > 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.
Your figures are surprising, so I tried and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India which sounds not nearly so bad. Which is not to say that small %-ages of big numbers don't yield big results, of course. Regional variations are another POV, I guess. > >> 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. Regards, ..jim -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
