6 ms·

Feel like these in no small part explain why Russians seem to have a disproportionate amount of programmers compared to all other countries outside the US.

by xfour 11y ago

oblio 11y ago
There's another former Communist country with a "disproportionate amount of programmers": Romania. It even had its own PC clone: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_PC https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_PC (in Romanian, sorry, but you can probably figure things out just from the dates and numbers :) ). Edit: How cute! At the bottom there are links to all the Romanian-made computers. There are at least 20 models I didn't even know of.
- foobarian 11y ago
  I heard it said that this was because of Ceausescu's regime's fixation on surveillance and intelligence. So they allocated top resources to information technology, resulting in an unusually IT-capable population.
- nathell 11y ago
  I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers. In Poland, for example, there were the 8-bit Meritums [1], the Elwro 800 Juniors [2], the Bosman 8s [3], the Mazovia PC clones [4] complete with their own Polish characters encoding that has the peculiarity of containing one character that had never existed in Unicode [5], to name but a few, not to mention the Odra mainframes [6]. [1]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File:Meritum_II_komplet.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File... [2]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:Elwro_800_calosc.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:E... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y [4]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File:Mazovia_1016_PC.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer)
  - oblio 11y ago
    Communists had 1 positive obsession: exact sciences. See all that focus on math, physics, etc. They probably thought they could solve all the world's problems as equations, with the head of state as the "master variable manipulator".
    - varjag 11y ago
      This was a necessary instrument for the arms race.
      - oblio 11y ago
        Of course. Someone in the Politburo read 1984.
  - 59nadir 11y ago
    > I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers. There's this beauty from Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80 I'm guessing a lot of countries overall had their own computers, not just eastern block. We don't usually hear much about them because we base our computer history mostly on the canon of the US. I was surprised to read in "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" that my former university's computer science department made a very prominent sendmail version back in the day (IDA sendmail) and that this was noteworthy in that context. This field has been international for a very long time.
    - interfixus 11y ago
      You are aware that Sweden was not a member of the "Eastern Block"?
      - 59nadir 11y ago
        That was exactly my point. Most likely every country (overall) had their own computer. It wasn't an "Eastern block thing". The degree of separation was obviously higher, but not all "western" manufacturers were American. (Also: danskjävel...)
- prodmerc 11y ago
  Yep, we're one of the top countries when it comes to engineers per capita, must've gotten that from the soviets :-). Too bad there's not enough resources to do much in the country, so everyone is fleeing it (not for long though, I hope)...
  - oblio 11y ago
    I'd say that retention is a lot better in the IT sector, definitely a lot better than in the 90s or early 00s.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Plus what I understand a good mathematics school. That helps as well.
degenerate 11y ago
It's also very cold outside. Forever.
gtrubetskoy 11y ago
I don't think so because nobody could afford these. It was the education system. Standard curriculum for everybody. By the time you finished 10th (last) grade you had studied pretty advanced math, physics, chemistry, etc. Even if it's not your thing, even if you could only get the lowest passing grade, you still had to do it or fail school. It was kind of rough, but I'm still reaping rewards from what it gave me.
- yankoff 11y ago
  Also may have to do with the prestige of being an engineer in USSR. That was a popular profession.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    I feel like I can only dream about such a time, such a place. Engineer? Prestige?
    - tormeh 11y ago
      I think it's the inverse. Disregard for engineers seems like an anglo-saxon phenomenon to me. The Germanic countries are, of course, famed for holding engineers in high regard, but so do most third-world countries, and China. I think the anglo-saxon opinion of engineers is caused by blurring the line between engineer and technician.
      - fit2rule 11y ago
        I think its caused by the inappropriate elevation of the marketing classes, who don't have a job unless someone else does the work of building something...
    - yankoff 11y ago
      Well, I think, being a software engineer is still pretty cool in Silicon Valley :)
    - prodmerc 11y ago
rdtsc 11y ago
Yap, agree 100%. That is why I am a programmer. Story time: Growing up in the late 80's, early 90's I liked to take apart electronics. Biggest treat for me was finding an old TV or radio to disassemble. Then I found out about computers. We got them at school for an "Informatics" course -- which is what they called "Computer Science". I thought those were great. The teacher let us play logic games on it for grades even -- Sokoban, Lemmings and others. My mom saw that I liked computers and started saving money, even though we were pretty poor. She saved for a year, but didn't tell me then, on March 8, 1993 she bought me a Soviet ZX Spectrum clone. That was the best gift I ever received in terms on impact on my life since. The clone was pretty crappy with rubber buttons and it loaded everything from tape recorder. We connected it to our old black and white TV that still had vacuum tubes in it. That computer helped me learn programming (had a C compiler, Pascal, assembly, lots of games) and English (since documentation, games and programs were all in English). Fast forward many years later and programming is my day job and I still like it.
- da02 11y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what languages do you use today?
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    Erlang, Python, C, C++, wrote some Android apps in Java, looking at Rust next probably.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  > The clone was pretty crappy with rubber buttons and it loaded everything from tape recorder. Well the original was not much better...
digi_owl 11y ago
From elsewhere i got the impression that there was less pre-compiled software to be had, so unless you wanted an expensive paper weight you basically had to learn to code.

Feel like these in no small part explain why Russians seem to have a disproportionate amount of programmers compared to all other countries outside the US.

by xfour 11y ago

Feel like these in no small part explain why Russians seem to have a disproportionate amount of programmers compared to all other countries outside the US.

oblio 11y ago

There's another former Communist country with a "disproportionate amount of programmers": Romania. It even had its own PC clone: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_PC https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_PC (in Romanian, sorry, but you can probably figure things out just from the dates and numbers :) ). Edit: How cute! At the bottom there are links to all the Romanian-made computers. There are at least 20 models I didn't even know of.

foobarian 11y ago
I heard it said that this was because of Ceausescu's regime's fixation on surveillance and intelligence. So they allocated top resources to information technology, resulting in an unusually IT-capable population.
nathell 11y ago
I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers. In Poland, for example, there were the 8-bit Meritums [1], the Elwro 800 Juniors [2], the Bosman 8s [3], the Mazovia PC clones [4] complete with their own Polish characters encoding that has the peculiarity of containing one character that had never existed in Unicode [5], to name but a few, not to mention the Odra mainframes [6]. [1]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File:Meritum_II_komplet.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File... [2]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:Elwro_800_calosc.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:E... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y [4]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File:Mazovia_1016_PC.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer)
- oblio 11y ago
  Communists had 1 positive obsession: exact sciences. See all that focus on math, physics, etc. They probably thought they could solve all the world's problems as equations, with the head of state as the "master variable manipulator".
  - varjag 11y ago
    This was a necessary instrument for the arms race.
    - oblio 11y ago
      Of course. Someone in the Politburo read 1984.
- 59nadir 11y ago
  > I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers. There's this beauty from Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80 I'm guessing a lot of countries overall had their own computers, not just eastern block. We don't usually hear much about them because we base our computer history mostly on the canon of the US. I was surprised to read in "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" that my former university's computer science department made a very prominent sendmail version back in the day (IDA sendmail) and that this was noteworthy in that context. This field has been international for a very long time.
  - interfixus 11y ago
    You are aware that Sweden was not a member of the "Eastern Block"?
    - 59nadir 11y ago
      That was exactly my point. Most likely every country (overall) had their own computer. It wasn't an "Eastern block thing". The degree of separation was obviously higher, but not all "western" manufacturers were American. (Also: danskjävel...)
prodmerc 11y ago
Yep, we're one of the top countries when it comes to engineers per capita, must've gotten that from the soviets :-). Too bad there's not enough resources to do much in the country, so everyone is fleeing it (not for long though, I hope)...
- oblio 11y ago
  I'd say that retention is a lot better in the IT sector, definitely a lot better than in the 90s or early 00s.
rdtsc 11y ago
Plus what I understand a good mathematics school. That helps as well.

degenerate 11y ago

It's also very cold outside. Forever.

gtrubetskoy 11y ago

I don't think so because nobody could afford these. It was the education system. Standard curriculum for everybody. By the time you finished 10th (last) grade you had studied pretty advanced math, physics, chemistry, etc. Even if it's not your thing, even if you could only get the lowest passing grade, you still had to do it or fail school. It was kind of rough, but I'm still reaping rewards from what it gave me.

yankoff 11y ago
Also may have to do with the prestige of being an engineer in USSR. That was a popular profession.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  I feel like I can only dream about such a time, such a place. Engineer? Prestige?
  - tormeh 11y ago
    I think it's the inverse. Disregard for engineers seems like an anglo-saxon phenomenon to me. The Germanic countries are, of course, famed for holding engineers in high regard, but so do most third-world countries, and China. I think the anglo-saxon opinion of engineers is caused by blurring the line between engineer and technician.
    - fit2rule 11y ago
      I think its caused by the inappropriate elevation of the marketing classes, who don't have a job unless someone else does the work of building something...
  - yankoff 11y ago
    Well, I think, being a software engineer is still pretty cool in Silicon Valley :)
  - prodmerc 11y ago

rdtsc 11y ago

Yap, agree 100%. That is why I am a programmer. Story time: Growing up in the late 80's, early 90's I liked to take apart electronics. Biggest treat for me was finding an old TV or radio to disassemble. Then I found out about computers. We got them at school for an "Informatics" course -- which is what they called "Computer Science". I thought those were great. The teacher let us play logic games on it for grades even -- Sokoban, Lemmings and others. My mom saw that I liked computers and started saving money, even though we were pretty poor. She saved for a year, but didn't tell me then, on March 8, 1993 she bought me a Soviet ZX Spectrum clone. That was the best gift I ever received in terms on impact on my life since. The clone was pretty crappy with rubber buttons and it loaded everything from tape recorder. We connected it to our old black and white TV that still had vacuum tubes in it. That computer helped me learn programming (had a C compiler, Pascal, assembly, lots of games) and English (since documentation, games and programs were all in English). Fast forward many years later and programming is my day job and I still like it.

da02 11y ago
Just out of curiosity, what languages do you use today?
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Erlang, Python, C, C++, wrote some Android apps in Java, looking at Rust next probably.
digi_owl 11y ago
> The clone was pretty crappy with rubber buttons and it loaded everything from tape recorder. Well the original was not much better...

digi_owl 11y ago

From elsewhere i got the impression that there was less pre-compiled software to be had, so unless you wanted an expensive paper weight you basically had to learn to code.