You can survive with English in Amsterdam and the Netherlands as well. Children learn english from the age of 9-10, TV programs are typically not dubbed so the odds are that you can have conversations in English with everyone you encounter.
3,256 karma · joined June 21, 2008
Like:
- Average cost of living is X
- Developers can earn X-Z salary
- Tax burden for companies is X
- You can find apartments in the range of X-Y at site Z
- X companies joined this initiative and are hiring
- There are weekly meetups at Bar X,Y,Z at time A
- Successful companies in Amsterdam include X,Y,Z they are all hanging out at location A
You are right it is not a pissing contest, but you mention exactly what Americans (or other foreigners) would think. Most foreigners don't know much about Holland and see everything as a sub-urb of Amsterdam. They don't know where the local talent is, where the good universities are, where (local) people want to live. Don't forget that Dutch people think Amsterdam is as cool as foreigners do.
Don't take me wrong, Appsterdam is a cool initiative, but to me it sounds like something by foreigners, for foreigners.
Then I suggests you read one out of many salesletters from people trying to sell their e-books to get rich quickly. They are specifically written for people who want to get rich with no innovation and quality at all.
If I read stories like these, it reminds me I have to work a little bit harder to be able to compete with the talent out there who have an edge on me. Why? Because these stories tell me that hard work, curiosity and dedication pay off.
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Thats the kind of abuse possible with languages such as Scala, Haskell or c++ templates.
It is also a shame that users who try to question the relevancy of HN submissions get downvoted. Even though it has more than 100 upvotes it is still not relevant to what this site is about. Unless the goal is to become reddit 2.0 with lots of mainstream articles simply because a large amounts of users think it is interesting, I think this kind of articles are best enjoyed elsewhere on the web. I flagged this story, even though I find it interesting.
1) Qt c++ devs will invest in Visual Studio and learn silverlight/XNA
or
2) Qt c++ devs simply switch to c++ development for iOS + Android