Comment by technoslut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by technoslut | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Japan suffers from a younger generation or a something being lost in translation. I'm reminded of this article:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/24/3177332/ia-oliver-reichens...

>Japanese web or app design is not comparable to Japanese art, graphic design or architecture. I could fill a page explaining why. It has to do with the way Japanese read, with the corporate fear of doing something different, and with the generally low level of design for the masses.

>One reason why Japanese web and app design feels weak is that technology requires good active and passive knowledge of English. English is the lingua franca of contemporary web and app development, both of our tools and our discourse. Even if you master English-based Objective-C or JavaScript, if you are not able to communicate with the international community of developers and designers, you miss out on what is desirable, even what is possible. Japanese developers and designers that don’t speak English are trapped within the relatively low level of tech and design that currently reigns in the Japanese corporate world.

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>Even the Japanese companies’ strengths matter less now, as consumers have lost the willingness to pay a premium for quality.

This is not true or Apple would not be as successful as they are today. In some areas foreign manufacturers have caught up enough where quality is less of an issue such as TVs. Consumers now value the TV less. This is not true of smartphones, tablets, or cars. The latter is an area that Japan still carries a heavy amount of influence.

Ah, your point about English has got to be very important, it's significant that Japan is the world's worst at teaching English as a second language, and that has to be fatal for this domain.

> Japan is the world's worst at teaching English as a second language

Actually, you're wrong. That dubious honor goes to South Korea, which spends one of the highest amounts of money per capita on English education, yet has the worst results in Asia.[0]

So the point about English actually isn't very important, given Samsung's dominance in the smartphone industry.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_South_Korea#Englis...

Errr, I should be more clear: the Japanese public schools don't actually teach English as we know it and I assume this holds for the all important test to get into a university. I.e. you can get high marks in it but you will be functionally illiterate unless you seek additional education, and if you do that while you're still stuck in the Japanese educational system you have to keep the two dialects separate in your mind.

South Korea may teach it poorly, but if they're trying to teach something recognizable as English they still ought to be doing it better. And then there's the close ties between our countries of various sorts, your Samsung example may not be apropos given all the other ways Koreans learn and practice English, in the military, I assume to some extent, which is not small in South Korea, in the flow of people to and from the US, etc.

> Errr, I should be more clear: the Japanese public schools don't actually teach English as we know it

I'm fully aware of how the Japanese teach/learn English.

> South Korea may teach it poorly, but if they're trying to teach something recognizable as English they still ought to be doing it better.

The South Korean educational system is no better when it comes to teaching English than the Japanese system. They pretty much use the same methods, many of which were taken directly from Japanese practices.

> And then there's the close ties between our countries of various sorts

There are close ties between Japan and the US as well.

> your Samsung example may not be apropos given all the other ways Koreans learn and practice English, in the military, I assume to some extent, which is not small in South Korea

It is actually quite small. The only significant group of people in the Korean military that gets regular English practice is KATUSA[0], and they are expected to have a certain TOEIC score just to get in.

The fact of the matter is South Korea visibly scores lower on tests of English proficiency than Japan, so I don't understand why you're so eager to state that their proficiency is actually higher than that of the Japanese.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KATUSA

I'm not saying their proficiency is greater (since prior to this discussion I had no knowledge of it), I was just saying it's possible. I hope there is English proficiency outside of KATUSA soldiers (only 3,400 as of 2012 according to Wikipedia), i.e. how are higher level officers going to coordinate with their American counterparts? But then again South Korea is I gather more and more confident of being able to handle threats by themselves (and perhaps less and less confident of meaningful US help ... and I'd assume proficiency is higher in the Air Force (English being the official worldwide language for air traffic control) which is what we could surge the fastest).

Anyway, to clarify my point about Samsung, if there's a greater pool of good English speakers to pull from (even if in general the pool is poorer ... especially since in either case there's little to chose from being functionally illiterate vs. even more functionally illiterate???), it could explain their being able to pull it off. They must being doing something right....

> how are higher level officers going to coordinate with their American counterparts?

Oh, I wouldn't doubt that higher level officers have a better command of English than your average rank-and-file soldier. But that's a relatively small number of people, right?

> They must being doing something right....

They're obviously doing something right in terms of being commercially successful. My whole point is that English fluency is not all that important for commercial success. For example, they could have the software engineering done overseas, with only the liaisons between the hardware and software teams fluent in English. This is all speculation. All I can say for sure is that South Korea's English education system is no better than that of Japan's.

Not just web development. Programming in general. Can't imagine what it would be like to learn programming and don't understand English.

> Can't imagine what it would be like to learn programming and not understand English.

(I read your sentence with an implied subject, which is fine for casual grammar, but the second phrase is subjunctive because the first is, so "do not" and "don't" fit poorly there, even for casual speech.)

Just imagine everything in a different language. Hydro Quebec had an application in French.

This is more evidence that community is key for programming. Community even trumps native language!

>English degree put to good use there

That sentence did felt a bit awkward.

All mainstream programming languages are based on English and so are the majority of resources. Even APIs for the operating systems we use and the protocols for communication.

Everything is pretty much exclusively English. It'd be such a huge disadvantage.

> Everything is pretty much exclusively English. It'd be such a huge disadvantage.

So, you're saying it's inconceivable that someone could be competitive in the field without English skills, not that programming in another language period is inconceivable. I'm totally down with that.

Well i learned to program before i learned English. But i agree without understanding English i would never have gotten to the level i am now on.

I don't consider you being normal. Most that do speak English don't understand programming. You're more likely to be the exception to the rule.

I'm not so sure if lack of English skills is one of the reasons. Koreans and Chinese have the same issue (koreans more than chinese) and they seem to do okay.

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