Subj : Re: Industry Calls for More Foreign Programmers
To   : comp.programming
From : spinoza1111
Date : Fri Aug 19 2005 03:33 am


Jim Slade wrote:
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com wrote in news:1124170671.897969.295870
> @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>
> >
> > Flavius Vespasianus wrote:
> >> spinoza1111@yahoo.com wrote in news:1124016883.271702.217090
> >> @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
> >>
> >> >
> >> > No, just the facts. Graduate students are attracted as students and
> >> > employees to top-flight people.
> >> >
> >>
> >> That's an assertion, not proof.
> >
> > A justified assertion. It's a nerd dodge to demand unreasonable "proof"
> > in social science, and it's based on an elementary misunderstanding,
> > that "studies" are a dialog with the people "studied" in sociology.
> >
>
> I know plenty of people with graudate degrees in computer science who are
> completely inempt when it comes to working with computers.
>
> Ergo: Graduates students are not top-flight people.
>
> NOT. But that's the same logical falacy you, and the industry lobbysts use.

I do agree, Jim (despite my other post) that in many cases, offshore
people will lack cultural knowledge helpful in designing and
implementing data systems.

A simple example is the fact that here in China, dates are written day,
month, year and not as in the USA.

But the importance of US-cultural knowledge will decline if the US
loses economic importance over the next ten years. And, the fact that
the current Administration has completely dropped the ball on the
economic threat that is China, while foolishly, indeed criminally,
invading Iraq, means that here and in Paris (where I traveled and
worked recently) people no longer look to the USA for economic
leadership.

Why develop a US-centric software application, with month/day/year
dates or temperatures in Fahrenheit (or whatever grotty details) when
global programmers can develop a customizable international system
instead? If you develop the application for the US, and the US market
dries up because of Bush's incompetence, you've wasted your time.

An international developer (whether he or she is Indian, or American)
may be culturally a better bet than some developer who punches out at
Unicode characters and calls code he can't understand "Sanskrit".

.