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Comment by ttul | Hacker News Reader

I couldn’t help but recall this joke:

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss.

Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organised by the Italians.

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The usual cliche about Italians. I would like to remember HN's audience that Italy is the 2nd manifacturing nation in EU and that a big share of our GDP depends on engineering products and services: https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/ita/. Package medicaments, pumps, iron based products, cars, trucks, chemicals are not products that can be improvised without any organization. And in general Italian engineers are good.

P.S: I am both Italian and an engineer.

It's a joke, it's not intended to be analyzed or countered.

I may as well point out that Britain has the third-most Michelin-starred restaurants of any country.

According to Forbes (2017) UK is far from be top country https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/11/23/the-to...

Aside from that, and I'm sorry is totally tangential, but I live in UK and I find the luck of food culture here disturbing. Sure there are a lot good restaurant, but most of the people are not able to appreciate and cook good food, while in France, Spain, Italy I find the level much higher.

But their cooks are French?

Btw for HN audience may be interesting to know that both the Intel 4004 and the Zilog Z80 were designed by an Italian.

I would say - empirically - that the biggest problem in South Europe is not the lack of talent of creators/makers but the lack of talent of managers.

Why do I say this? Our creators/makers are sucessful abroad. Our managers not so.

Not even that IMHO, but Italy lacks business "system" in terms of different components all trying to create the platform for creating sustainable businesses at scale.

Similarly. For the British it’s allowed so long as it’s not forbidden. For Germans it’s forbidden unless it’s allowed. For Italians it’s allowed especially if it’s forbidden.

Subtle variation:

Heaven is where the food is Italian and the engineering is German.

Hell is where the food is German and the engineering is Italian.

Please allow me to show a little bit of national pride (the parent comment it's a joke, I know...).

While absolutely terrible at organizing (on a _fractal_ scale: from the smallest details to the big picture), and affected by a less than optimal state of the economy, we have a pretty good engineering tradition. I have met astonishing engineers in Italy (and in Germany as well, and Russia, and USA, and so on...) with deep theoretical knowledge and a strong hands on experience.

Edit: clarified, not to be taken too seriously

The parent is a joke based on stereotypes that I think excels partially because it pokes fun at all nationalities involved. I wouldn't take it too seriously. :)

Schools were good and the hands-on experience was made from very young age locally before than abroad as adults. Such depth is going lost, though. In that sense, this new AWS region in Milan should bring some operational jobs which will hopefully go to local workforce to keep this tradition going.

Italian engineering is truly incredible, producing some of the most cutting edge advances the world has seen... until they catch fire.

We do actually have top notch engineers; too bad they're often forced to work abroad, particularly researchers. That joke about Italy just doesn't split the problem in two as it should by taking into account the ignorant leading class which does its best to hinder most technical and cultural development in this country. The (in)famous "Gelmini Tunnel" as it was later called to ridicule our then science minister is just an example.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mariastella-gelmini-italy-ug...

I was being tongue-in-cheek. I'm also a car guy and was mostly taking the piss out of the fact Ferraris are known to catch fire quite often and without much prodding, despite being also some of the most amazing cutting edge machines ever built.

Only if it's a public bus in the center of the capital :)

I thought catching fire was a prerogative of F35 from Lockheed Martin

ho ho ho... since when Italian Engineering is less than excellent? I can think of Arduino, mp3, the Pendolino... all Italian or with significant Italian contributions.

The curse of the country is its managerial class, which will suppress whatever innovation with enthusiastic zeal, only to parrot similar solutions a generation later.

They're hell bent in preserving the status quo and gently weaving their relations network rather than do anything else...

> the Pendolino

Much of which is technology bought from British Rail with their failed Advanced Passenger Train. Failed because the government of the time (Wilson, I think) pressured them to demo before it was ready. That led to a publicly embarrassing demo where many felt sick because the lean wasn't quite perfected, which they had been warned would happen.

After which, rather than providing funds to finish the debugging and releasing, it was taken as yet more objective proof nationalised rail didn't work and funds were limited. Despite this it was completed, and prototypes quietly run successfully in passenger service. The government (by this time Thatcher) would not approve production versions, so the patents and drawings were sold to Fiat.

Twenty odd years later Virgin would buy them as Pendolinos.

A very typical British technology story really.

I think they have a couple of well known car brands, too... if memory serves ;-)

Cars? Used to... it's mostly all gone, sold and off-shored.

(and considering what a burden on the public purse had FIAT become it's perhaps good news)

And motorbikes. And some very relevant players in the military and space industries.

And don't forget the motorcycles

thanks for mentioning Arduino (which is only partially Italian) :)

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