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from the learn-from-the-past-to-be-ready-for-the-future dept.
Marketplace has a story on Japan's "aversion to startups":
Silicon Valley appreciates a good failure. The Japanese — not so much. "People have the mentality of failure as not being an option. And if you fail, they will face social rejection," says Toshi Yamamoto, CEO and founder of software company ChatWork. When he was launching his company while still in college, says Yamamoto, he was constantly questioned. "All the time. They call me crazy – why do you do that? Why don't you go to a large corporation? Or, why don't you work for the company?" he says.
And while Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe is pushing hard to reverse the country's economic slump, when it comes to tech and innovation, Japan is still behind — Especially reluctant, it would seem, to embrace the culture of start-ups.
Imagine, says William Saito, special adviser to the cabinet of Japan and its prime minister, two moms of recent college grads. One from Stanford, and one from Tokyo University. The Stanford mom would be proud to say her kid was going to work at a startup. But if the Tokyo University mom found out her young grad was going to work at a startup, the attitude would be more along the lines of "Oh no, poor guy. He couldn't get in to Mitsubishi." Says Saito, "Factories are still humming ... the government works relatively well. Crime is relatively low." What's changed, he says, is "kind of a disease." The country has lost confidence, leading to less risk taking, fear of failure and ultimately, a lack of innovation.
[...] You can see the problem right at the source. Or, really, the source code. When programmers, working on those hot new apps, crunch out lines of text they include comments — sort of digital post-it notes meant to help team members navigate their way through all that Java or C++. Even genius programmers from Stanford need collaboration in order to succeed. But in Japan, the willingness to do just that can be very tough to find. Instead of helpful messages, says Saito, comments left by a Japanese programmer, accustomed to working solo, may be more likely to send a message like "Do not touch this code or I will kill you." Notes Saito, "source code is very telling. You can the tell personality of a country this way. This is the one thing that is really holding back Japan."
A counterpoint from Bloomberg (Dec. 2014):
December is going to be a busy month for Japan's equity markets. The 28 initial public offerings from yesterday through Dec. 26 will push the 2014 total to 80, the most since 2007, bourse data compiled by Bloomberg show. More than half will list on the market for small, high-growth businesses known as TSE Mothers, where listing requirements were relaxed in March. The flurry of share sales is being led by technology entrepreneurs and underscores confidence in Japan's stock rally as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe heads to the polls in two days. Even with the world's third-biggest economy in recession, the unprecedented monetary easing under Abe that's spurred a 141 percent surge for the smallest listed companies sets the scene for more IPOs in 2015, says Kabu.com Securities Co. "I expect more IPOs next year," Tsutomu Yamada, a market analyst at Kabu.com Securities, said by phone from Tokyo yesterday. "Businesses have to list when the going is good, and investors want to put their money in companies that will grow. Internet, biotechnology and robotics companies are fresh, small and able to grab investors' attention."
[...] In an effort to lure smaller businesses, Japan Exchange Group Inc. lowered minimum shareholder requirements in March and is offering more consultation services to attract IPOs from its home market and countries such as South Korea and Malaysia, where accounting rules are similar to Japan, said Yasuyuki Konuma, an executive officer who oversees new listings and business development at the bourse. Since elections were called in November 2012 that brought Abe to power, the TSE Mothers Index has more than doubled, while the Topix soared 93 percent through yesterday. Abenomics, the premier's signature plan to end decades of deflation, has unleashed unprecedented monetary easing that weakened the yen and sparked a boom in stock prices and corporate earnings.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday September 22 2015, @04:51AM
Comments seem to be a passing fancy of late.
I frequently encounter mountains of code, even in Linux source code, that contain just about zero comments in procedural code. I've heard some programmers insist that the code is the truth, and the comments will invariably become lies. (Usually these guys are the worst at keeping comments up to date when making code changes, so I guess they would know).
I've seen enough different commenting styles from good and bad programmers to no longer assume it carries a whole lot of insight into that programmers' culture.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @05:01AM
I used to write extensive comments in my code, and then I realized two things:
(1) Nobody reads my code.
(2) Nobody uses my code.
I don't bother dressing up when I masturbate either.
(Score: 4, Touché) by basicbasicbasic on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:10AM
(1) Nobody reads my code. (2) Nobody uses my code.
Including you? Because after a long enough time has passed you need comments on your own code as much as anyone else. It's not going to stay in your head forever.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:52AM
If you need comments to read your own code, you're a shitty coder.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:21AM
Write a couple thousand lines doing anything that you have not done before.
Wait six months, then read your old code.
That code will be unintelligible to you and will easily take 5-10 times as long to understand without comments than with. Every developer has gone through this many, many times. The bonus is that unless you are hopelessly untalented, your six month old code will look like complete shit to you. That is just the nature of a craftsman at work.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @03:27PM
Write a couple thousand lines doing anything that you have not done before.
Wait six months, then read your old code.
That code will be unintelligible to you and will easily take 5-10 times as long to understand without comments than with. Every developer has gone through this many, many times. The bonus is that unless you are hopelessly untalented, your six month old code will look like complete shit to you. That is just the nature of a craftsman at work.
Exactly right. There may be a coder somewhere who can remember everything he did for years, but i haven't met him. Try looking at code you wrote from years ago. No f'ing clue what's going on, and 'who wrote this pile of...?', oh wait, me, heh. Although, I do like the much more rare, 'this code is really nicely done, who wrote this?, oh wait, me....'
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 22 2015, @05:04PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @07:42AM
Well, many comments by non-commenters would be useless anyway, so it's a service for you that they omit them.
Comments like this can be safely omitted. Doing so actually improves readability of the code.
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Tuesday September 22 2015, @08:19PM
This.
If you code in a corporate environment, target the least common denominator. Resist the urge to do clever, fun things in your code and your comments will be useless -- requirements and design documents will suffice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Tuesday September 22 2015, @02:00PM
Going to disagree with you on the comments thing : ) Most comments are completely useless, just delete them. The functions should describe what actions are being taken. The variables should describe what they are holding. Write it for readability and you won't need comments. I do appreciate comments when there are magic numbers though. Because then i can extract those magic numbers into an enum and use the comments to do it. Then i delete the useless comments when the magic numbers are gone : ) I also do something similar when someone comments their eight levels deep nested ternary that spans the width of the screen and is four lines tall *shudders*. Sometimes people use comments to divide up long functions into multiple sections. Just turn those sections into functions. I am certain you see the pattern i'm laying down.
I'm not being absolutist though, there are some languages and IDEs where comments are useful. Assembly would be one : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday September 22 2015, @03:41PM
Not just of late. Most of the code I inherit has no comments. I guess whoever wrote it understood what it did. No one else could. I even put comments in code I inherit saying I don't know how it works, just to warn myself if I ever come back to it later. I don't see how no-comment code is ever modified later on. Maybe I understand something as I'm writing it, but even a few weeks later I can't remember what it did. But a lot of this stuff seems to be write-once code no one ever dares to modify. I've just compiled some of it and bugs appeared in the new binary, it was that brittle. So, yeah, if you want it done right in a way that can be maintained, get someone who will add minimal comments about how the code works and what it does.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @04:00PM
If I have a choice I only write comments to document non-obvious algorithms and interfaces where there's no separate document.
Problem with eg. the Linux kernel is only a tiny fraction of the kernel is documented elsewhere and there is no fucking comment.
Well, I guess it's great for the job security of people who take the time to memorize all the spaghetti in a subsystem.