Bob La Quey wrote:
On 1/15/08, Darren New <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Bob La Quey wrote:
One needs only look at the high percentages of immigrants
and the immediate children of immigrants in science and
engineering to see what a large advantage this is. It is
ironic in a way that so many immigrants see an advantage
to a career in science or engineering as compared to the
native born Americans.
You need to ask yourself why those immigrants chose to come to the USA
instead of any of the many other places they could have gone, including
China and India.
Two reasons:
1) Historically economic opportunity has been better in the USA
2) The USA has had relatively liberal immigration policies.
Very few of these immigrants come here for political or ideological reasons.
It is quite mistaken to suggest otherwise.
I wasn't suggesting it was for political or ideological reasons. Or did
you fire that statement off before actually reading the next paragraph I
wrote? :-)
I would also ask myself why ASCII is so ubiquitous. :-)
Because English is the second language of choice for most
of the world and the first language of economics.
And, uh, lots and lots of computer technology originally came from
countries where english is the primary language?
ASCII does a pretty good job with English and is
simpler than the alternatives, eh?
Not really any simpler. Had (say) France or Spain been the first
countries building popular computer stuff, I imagine they'd have found
room for the accented characters.
That is a pretty simple minded view of entrepreneurship. :)
True, if you think that my 3-line summary in an email message embodies
the totality of my view.
much rather be a poet in almost any of the Spanish speaking
countries to the south of us.
Sure, there are creative enterprises which are poorly rewarded in the
USA. I can't think of any "school of poetry" offhand in the USA like I
can think of "school of engineering" here. I was under the impression we
were talking about computer software.
I don't imagine there are too many schools of innovative political
scientist in China these days, either, just as an example. I don't
foresee someone like Confucius showing up and making a big scene there
this decade.
A good observation. And if you think about it a remarkable achievment.
I just hope it lasts! :-)
Further I see any serious software project is naturally divisible
into two parts: Definition and Implementation.
Bwaaa ha ha ha! Sure, all those serious software projects that go 900%
over budget and then get scrapped as completely unusable can be
separated into those two parts.
Definition is hard
to outsource depending as it does on the "customer" who often
must be worked with face to face. Implementation OTOH is
realtively easy to outsource if one has a good solid definition,
which is, of course, a _big_ if.
Assuming you (a) have a customer who knows what they want, (b) you can
figure out what the customer wants, (c) the requirements don't change in
the time it takes to write it, (d) you can express that to the
programmers who don't speak your language natively and never even met
the customer and quite possibly never had anything to do with your
customer's type of business, (e) that you convince the outsourcees that
they should do what you need rather than what's easiest and most
profitable for them, and (f) you have a way of telling that what you got
back is what you asked for, and (g) you can tell before you start which
outsourcing group will actually be able to accomplish what you're paying
them for, and (h) you can convince them to work on your project to the
exclusion of other projects that might come later but are more profitable.
None of these are even middling, let alone "relatively easy". By the
time you can clearly write unambiguous specs and have an inexpensive way
of ensuring that the result meets those specs and is flexible enough to
meet your future needs, you have reduced the problem to something you
might as well just finish yourself - you've already done 90% of the work.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
