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Comment by tkgally | Hacker News Reader

It might be interesting to discuss this article in conjunction with another article that made the HN front page today [1], particularly the comments about how terrible Japanese software is.

I am a long-term resident of Japan, and I would be the last person to defend Japanese software in general. I’ve run into particularly horrible user interfaces on government websites and in some internal systems used by my employer.

But a major element behind the success of Japanese convenience stores seems to be the software that manages the inventory, shelf placement, worker shifts, and many other things. The only time I interface with that software directly is when I buy tickets, use ATMs, or print out documents on the multifunction copy machines. Those interfaces work fine. Considering how smoothly the stores operate, the software behind the scenes must be working pretty well, too.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42077886

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Japan is known to be generally good at logistics, and you could say there is a software aspect to that. Robotics and machine control are also a traditional strength. My own experience is that their big weakness is interfacing with the user, whether it is red tape at an office or a complex GUI.

Maybe the explanation is that Japanese institutions perform well when development is wholly internal and allowed a long time. My own experience has been that Japanese groups attack tasks with superior organization, but they need extra time to adapt to novel input.

Speaking to logistical skills I'm reminded of the example of Japan converting a train line to a subway line in three hours. The amount of prep and planning required to pull this off in a live environment is crazy to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYW4YYqG5A

Skill and willingness (to a fault) to pay people to do the job or at least be there is needed. Somehow their floppy+internet+paper_card+human-based health insurance is more efficient than in my country where we have a smart card and shiny website, but it takes 6 weeks to be registered into the system after you send papers. In Japan the same process take about 30min including writing your address 2 times in kanji.

Japan also seems to make pretty decent games, and manages to export them to eager fans around the globe. (Nintendo just being the most visible example.)

Yeah. Between the parent comment about the software that runs the convenience stores.

And yours, Games. Sony, Nintendo, are we really saying the country that makes PlayStation and Nintendo's is 'bad' at software?

And, Didn't someone in Japan make the Ruby language?

I need to go back to the other post and re-read to find, where is the 'bad' software? How are they categorizing Japanese software as 'bad' compared to any other country? Was it just because US Silicon Valley has had a few bigger startups in general? Is that really a good benchmark?

The benchmark where Japanese software allegedly fails (user experience) rings true especially in their video games. One of the major reasons Xbox was so successful in the mid 00's is because the Japanese companies were far behind on online user experience. Japanese video games tend to have really great gameplay, but the menus and settings are incredibly lacking. Japanese PC ports were all around terrible up until a few years ago. Elden Ring launched on PC without an "exit game" button in the pause menu, for example. Nintendo's settings menus only having one option (rumble on/off) is a running joke at this point.

I think the "design to meet spec, not to anticipate users needs" philosophy is also apparent in the game design. Western RPGs are characterized by their sandbox/do anything capability. Create a character, choose your class, pick your allies, kill any NPC, choose your ending. Japanese RPGs are structured with predefined characters, class roles (with a bit of customization sometimes), narrative, and ending (and maybe a "bad ending" if they want to punish you for not doing all the side quests).

Breath of the Wild is much more “do anything.” Exception to prove the rule?

Zelda definitely took inspiration from Skyrim/Minecraft sandbox with the recent titles. There's also lots of Western RPGs that brand themselves as JRPG because they follow the linear format. It's less the exception that proves the rule, and more evidence that Eastern and Western developers are learning from each other.

No, no, I can believe that most Japanese software is bad. And also that the average piece of Japanese software is worse than the average piece of eg US software.

I mean most Japanese games are known for their stories and character development - with negative remarks wrt the user interface. Also, Sony hasn't been Japanese in ages. It's even a pretty well known point theyre often salty about, because they feel betrayed by Sony for the most part

What are you referring to by Sony not being Japanese?

They've heavily invested in moving a lot of their game production to US and making more western-style games. They only have a few game developers in Japan these days since closing Japan Studio.

Enterprise software is almost universally pretty terrible, and yet corporate world is running smoothly. That's because, at the end of the day, the quality of life of the users (employees) does not matter that much, they adjust and cope to get their work done.

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