Subj : Re: Industry Calls for More Foreign Programmers
To   : comp.programming
From : spinoza1111
Date : Sat Aug 20 2005 05:24 am


Scott Moore wrote:
> spinoza1111@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >
> > 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".
> >
>
> Cool. Now tie global warming to programming productivity....

Piece of cake.

For example: in order to appear more productive than they actually are,
in a situation where management alone defines productivity, many
programmers work unpaid, unreported hours. To do so, they drive to work
one to a car in the US, thereby spewing hydrocarbons into the air.

"Programming productivity" inherits exclusively in MIS talk from a
"productivity" which is known to externalize costs to the environment,
in which the effect of a highly "productive" factory on a nearby
wetland doesn't have to be taken into account.

"Programming productivity" as a measure fails to speak to simple
correctness and efficiency and the needs of all stakeholders and as
such is part of a culture that creates global warming through overfocus
on a narrow set of needs.

These needs are defined by corporate managers, who, as John Kenneth
Galbraith has long pointed out, are given power not only over
programmers but even over boards of directors and shareholders, who, in
a society based on the sanctity of private property, would be thought
to be the controlling agents of companies.

But, as Galbraith shows (most recently in an essay titled The Economics
of Innocent Fraud) to make owners of capital controlling entities
created resistance to "trusts" and "monopolies" even by such
Republicans as Teddy Roosevelt in the 20th century, and this resistance
increased in the Great Depression, when actual owners such as John D.
Rockefeller were blamed for practices that created high prices and a
scarcity of good jobs.

Therefore, in the 1950s, real power moved to management, with most of
it being concentrated in the executive suite but a "large modicum"
devolving down into middle management including MIS and end users.

They have been, as Galbraith shows, given credit for insight in a
ceremonial fashion, in a fashion demanded by the cultural fact that
SOMEONE has to be thought to be in control of large organizations, and
that SOMEONE is invested, in a return to barbarism, with a sort of
agreed-upon *mana*.

Whether or not corporate managers actually are able to run large
organizations properly is undecided and luck plays a role. But, being a
mature adult in our society entails agreeing that they are, for the
most part, able to do so, and, more important from the standpoint of
mere employability, being able to at all times ceremoniously show that
one agrees to this proposition in some condign fashion.

Galbraith does NOT, of course, recommend any alternatives. It's just as
irrational to presuppose that Communist bureaucrats can run even larger
state organizations, and their ability to do so has been decisively
shown to be non-existent (yet, in Communist states, people likewise had
to show, on the job, that they thought that the Commie bosses could do
their own job).

Barthes and other Frog philosophers have shown that it may be the case,
that all societies need comforting, ceremonious illusions to survive.
But we should never deign to call those illusions knowledge about "the
real world".

Basically, in my book, if you know your programming trade, you are
axiomatically and by definition "productive". However, many managers
and their programmers mean by "productivity" something part ceremonious
which includes not only output but also a ceremonious good attitude and
a willingness to do whatever the User "wants" (where the language of
"the user wants" obscures the fact that the user is an agent of the
board of directors).

One consequence of doing so was the absurd inflation in CEO salaries of
failing and dying companies while the actual employees of those
companies were laid off en masse.

I do hope that I have answered your question, and that my own hot air
is not contributing to global warming.

.