Hacker News Reader

Comment by wetpaws | Hacker News Reader

If India is doing hardware as good as it is doing software, God have a mercy on our poor souls.

That, can somehow relate. But hardware is easier than software ( drop company, find workers, rinse and repeat).

Software is unique every project, it's hard to outsource quality. The best ones aren't looking for work, because they have plenty

The funny thing is, I see more and more high quality and innovative software from the Chinese.

A very popular JS framework, Vue.JS, is Chinese made. These things used to be US made.

Also, Facebook is said to target TikTok by releasing apps and features to compete with them. It used to be the other way around.

The word is that Chinese are on the cutting edge of AI research too.

Nore and more it feels like the state of the art of Software is no longer tied to the Silicon Valley. Interesting times.

Facebook hasn't been innovative for a long time, though. Not since they copied Snapchat stories on Instagram.

Is Vue.JS actually "Chinese made"? I checked out their team section and it seems very international, I couldn't see how you'd claim the team is based in any particular country.

I had my doubts about that too, thanks for checking.

How do you define what make of the software is? If Zuckerberg writes a loop when on a trip to France, can we say that Facebook is now partly France made?

Yea, it’s a bit ambiguous, especially in Sillicon Valley where the whole place is built on immigrants. At the places I’ve worked easily over two thirds of my teammates were immigrants born in other countries.

I do see that apparently the creator of Vue.JS was born in China, and then worked at Google in America. Beyond that I’m not clear on the details.

The war on messaging is partially won for now.

TikTok's audience is too young and SnapChat wasn't really competition for Facebook ( WhatsApp was)

I do recognise I was surprised to see TikTok by my neece. It's not a threat yet ( the audience is too young), but they are upping their skills considerately lately

>> the art of Software is no longer tied to the Silicon Valley

It never been. Just look for example how many software were/is created in Europe, especially open source.

Slightly different Point of view: HW needs infrastructure.

It needs Packages, materials, PCB houses etc ideally all near by, with good transportation networks, etc. That was what ShenZhen was good at. It took very low cost labors and supported government and a lot time to build up.

Take a look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA on how to build IPhone from parts bought in ShenZhen public market to see the supported systems needed for HW. You can imagine how much easier and faster to prototype/build HW (drone, robots, etc) in ShenZhen as compare to anywhere else in the world (for now).

As the labor cost goes up in ShenZhen / China, the significant advantages are gone. That's why China is trying to move up via Tech/IP, etc.

Same development processes happened in Japan, Korea, Taiwan for the past 40-50 years. All of them start with unskilled Textile -> toy assembly -> Electonic PCB assembly -> PCB Design -> Simple Asic / Systems-> Complex ASIC / Complex Systems.

As they move up the food chain, they all "clone / steal / borrow / learn" ip from more developed nations.

It is also repeating the process 150 years ago where UK invented the Train/Rail system and US just scaled/improved to much bigger system.

History just keep repeating.

Self employed = easier to start software company, yes.

But in the context of outsourcing, dropping a company ( which I summarized infrastructure with: "drop company"), hardware is a lot easier.

You do have a lot to do initially, but big companies have their "procedure". Follow the procedure and everything could be almost right initially.

Software projects can't expand like that "by the book".

Every extra ( new) employee on a project could even move the finish of it 6 months further.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com