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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

In kind of a similar vein, many years ago Germany decided to become kind of the silicon valley of optics and photonics (e.g., lasers and their ilk). While I don't think they are the dominant player today, they are certainly a force to be reckoned with, and they seem to have a developed a decent pipeline of ideas and people from university and government labs to a private sector that is probably subsidized.

Granted, it's a smaller business than semi, but it suggests to me that a national program to strengthen an industry isn't guaranteed to be a failure.

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> it suggests to me that a national program to strengthen an industry isn't guaranteed to be a failure

"Isn't guaranteed to be a failure".

Sorry, I struggle to interpret sentences like this. English isn't my first language.

Please clarify?

Are you saying that "it is not definitely a failure"?

I can't figure out if it's the above, or if it is this:

"won't necessary fail"

More specifically, I'm not sure if the implication is optimistic or pessimistic.

I hope that makes sense - the nuances of English are a delightful journey of exceptions; something my programming brain struggles with at times.

For me (Eastern US) “is not definitely a failure”, “won’t necessarily fail”, and “isn’t guaranteed to be a failure” all indicate that something would be expected to usually fail, but might not.

To me, they can be optimistic or pessimistic based on what the baseline is. I read the GP’s post as optimistic, as they come from a perspective of these kinds of government programs always failing. However, from a baseline of these kinds of government programs often succeeding, any of the three versions would be pessimistic.

Since the post

Optimistic. I would say: Definitely not a failure.

And I apologize for using unclear language. I should be thinking about a wider audience when writing in an international forum. Thanks for pointing it out!

I'd prefer that you continue to use nuanced English that is logically sound, because I (and I imagine others) can learn from you.

The fact that you took the time to clarify my confusion is the ideal consequence I'd say.

It's a very programming-like phrase, actually. Just parse it from the inside out: (isn't (guaranteed to be (a failure))

An equivalent might be "has some chance of success" but that misses the sense that the presumption is failure. More verbosely, the phrase might be: "One might presume that a national program to strengthen an industry would be a guaranteed failure, but this suggests to me that it might have some chance."

"Just because it is sponsored and coordinated by the governments, doesn't mean it must fail."

The implied notion is that the governments and their agencies are usually too incompetent and anything but innovative, so programs like this are oftentimes just a way to extort the money for some and a chance to pose in front of the cameras for the politicians.

The EUV source inside ASML's lithography machines is from the German optics company Zeiss, and the lasers used in that system which generates EUV wavelength light by bombarding tin droplets is also from another German company, Trumpf.

Also quite a lot of scientific lasers are from Toptica.

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