8 ms·

Why So Many Top Hackers Hail from Russia

142 points by snowy 9y ago

mc32 9y ago
Lots of talent (technical universities, emphasis on science and maths in general), undercompensation at local companies, and inability for international police reach (extradition from RU for "cyber" crimes is not routine). So a nice opportunity for hackers so long as they don't bother the local state and act outwardly.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Sounds like job security for me.
rndmize 9y ago
I think this stems in part from the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture we have in the US, where its almost expected that most kids won't be good at mathematics. The side effect of this, imo, is that fields that are close to math or dependent on it (physics, stats, CS, etc.) pick up a piece of that stigma and idea that its acceptable to be bad at these things. I've seen occasional articles about quants on wall street and how a good number of them are Russian/Eastern European (this kind of thing - https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-21/how-russia-has-lost-its-mathematical-minds-to-the-west https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-21/how-russi... ) and I feel this is another directly related element - having a strong math culture allows you to have a strong CS culture. I've been happy to see that in the last decade, the US is starting to start bringing the pieces we need to get that kind of culture back - the popularity of startups and programming with the media that bring them to the attention of the average person. Space is cool again, and movies like "The Martian" are, imo, absolutely critical in making science/engineering something worth striving for. Hopefully we'll see some of this trickle down to our educational systems in the near future.
- pm90 9y ago
  Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it. Eventually, things like Khan Academy might prove a lot more useful in making math and science a culturally desirable field.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it. I think the problem is expecting some "nice" (friendly, etc) way of teaching math, which dilutes their content (like Disney-fying a novel). The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there.
    - k0doque 9y ago
      I advise taking a look at the mir titles or the Israel Gelfand books. Looking from it, Russian are really good at producing top notch popular science. Tough there is no fry, their math book are almost game like, with few carefully built example and very clear explanation using only some diagram when needed (consequently their book are quite small) and the exercise are absolutely not rote based, except the first few exercice, and even then they all serve to illustrate a specific part of a concept, all the others are puzzle like problem. Putting lots of full color image is not making math "fun", well built and interesting problem is.
      - pm90 9y ago
        OMG I LOVED THE MIR BOOKS! Yes, they were incredibly simple, weren't littered with images, only essential diagrams. And the English translations were very good... I can only imagine what the Russian language versions were.
    - watwut 9y ago
      > The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there. Not entirely. A lot of it is problem solving exercises as opposed to rote solve 20 exactly same problems in row seen in us books. Memorization won't help you solve those exercises. There is also les focus on arithmetic and more on equations much sooner. If you actually like math, you will prefer Russian exercises, cause they challenge you.
  - deleted 9y ago
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture So true. It's cool to say you are bad at math.
- ardit33 9y ago
  Apart from the former communist math teaching being much better, I think it is cultural as well. Being an engineer in a former communist country was (is) a ticket to good life, similar lifestyle to a doctor or a lawyer. In the US being an engineer is seen as boring, and something only nerdy un-socialable people do. Also there are more attractive alternatives to pursue for smart people in the US. Basically, it boils down that a society will produce the type of talent that it values (by both training, and steering talented folks to certain disciplines). I'd say it is the same reason the US sucks at producing soccer talents, event compared to much smaller countries like Croatia or Belgium.
  - jrimbault 9y ago
    On the other hand, a lack of math teachers could be explained because people who have decent math skills can now live off that skill by being an engineer much more easily than before when they would have been math teachers.
    - r00fus 9y ago
      So a society with a paucity of math skilled people means less teachers with math skills which perpetuates the cycle?
    - Fezzik 9y ago
      That was my thought. I wonder what the backgrounds are of Russian teachers/professors of mathematics? I do not know oodles of math teachers, but all of my teachers as a kid, and friends who teach math now, received a four year degree on mathematics and went right in to teaching. They were very uninspiring (career-wise) people, with little knowledge of how math is applied outside of a high-school/university context.
    - JBlue42 9y ago
      Anecdotes from growing up in the rural US. In high school: - We went through three math teachers one year because they could find less stressful, better-paying work as accountants. - My AP Stats teacher had to work weekends at Best Buy.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  It seems math textbooks in the US are 2-3 grade levels easier than those in East Asia. SAT Math is considered a piece of cake even by non-top but good students there. I heard Russian math is similarly rigorous. This reduces the level of logical thinking skills most American children get to practice from school. Programming well requires good abstract and logical thinking which is easier to develop from a young age. Thus the US math education may in effect reduce the chances of many people achieving their potentials. Tangentially, can someone knowledgeable shed light on why American math curriculum is significantly easier than those in East Asia and Russia?
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    Logical thinking skills are the gateway to independent thought. Too much of that and the proles could stage a revolt.
    - webnrrd2k 9y ago
      Wouldn't that be true in Russia and East Asia as well?
      - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
        Except their citizens are aware that their freedom is constrained. Americans are deluded by the "land of the free" mantra. The powers that be don't want to face a collective red pill movement.
  - arkades 9y ago
    The 2-3 grade delta sounds about right. I was a good but not too math student in (Eastern European) country before moving here. I Didn't have to open a math book again for about 3 years. Most of my friends from the same generation of immigrants would give the same number. More was simply expected of us. Not "hoped for" or "aspired to", but expected. And parents weren't at loggerheads with teachers; what teachers said was law. So if a teacher said you were learning the multiplication table this week, parents didn't argue it was too much, or encourage you to "do your best." You'd be drilled on those times tables until you wanted to kill someone, but you'd damn well be expected to have them memorized by the end of the week. The idea that people were driven by good money is a western misinterpretation, or whatever the cultural equivalent of anachronism is. My grandmother used to scold my aunt for marrying an engineer instead of a tin knocker, like my mother did, because tin knockers brought home the real money. I think those two elements - expectations and parental cooperation - don't get enough credit, by far.
- placeybordeaux 9y ago
  Yeah it was frustrating to see a good friend of mine that has taught himself to make basic computer games in gamemaker, that can play competitive MTG (notable due to the large state machine you have to simulate in your head) and can pick up new systems quickly shyed away from CS because he'd need to take a math class.
- FTA 9y ago
  This sounds a lot like stereotype threat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat). I'd say though, rather than "it's acceptable to be bad at these things," people instead avoid it _because_ they feel they will do poorly and fail at it if they try.
coldcode 9y ago
In 1973 a female teacher (I think a teacher) at my high school got funding to start a computer science (i.e. programming) class in my high school. We learned to code in Basic and Fortran(interpreted!) on a teletype machine with a paper tape reader, connected to some time sharing system, plus got industry visitors and some field trips. Today I am a programmer because of this. If someone can put that together back then you can do it now.
vrutkovs 9y ago
This article may have a point about poor state of basic computer education in US, but its just blindly guesses the reasons on the topic of why so many hackers are from ex-USSR countries. A pretty good level of CS doesn't help here much - take a look at Europe, for instance. The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes students think about the weak points of any system, gives them a chance to train their skills etc. The side effect of this culture is much higher level of corruption and financial crimes
- eklavya 9y ago
  When you say the article is making a blind guess, can you substantiate that your own hypothesis is not one?
- xor1 9y ago
  >The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes students think about the weak points of any system, gives them a chance to train their skills etc. The side effect of this culture is much higher level of corruption and financial crimes If your theory was true, Chinese devs and hackers would have the same reputation for prowess as their Russian counterparts. I like Sergey Aleynikov's explanation: Russians had a reputation for being the best programmers on Wall Street, and Serge thought he knew why: they had been forced to learn programming without the luxury of endless computer time. “In Russia, time on the computer was measured in minutes,” he says. “When you write a program, you are given a tiny time slot to make it work. Consequently we learned to write the code in a way that minimized the amount of debugging. And so you had to think about it a lot before you committed it to paper. . . . The ready availability of computer time creates this mode of working where you just have an idea and type it and maybe erase it 10 times. Good Russian programmers, they tend to have had that one experience at some time in the past: the experience of limited access to computer time.” http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...
  - digi_owl 9y ago
tryitnow 9y ago
> although there currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011. This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS? I wonder if this could be addressed at the state level. Why couldn't California mandate a more Russian style approach - perhaps even with an entirely new exam and curriculum since the CS AP exam doesn't appear to cut it. Computer Science is just as important as language skills now, we need to start acting like it.
- douche 9y ago
  A lot of schools don't have the budget for gym class. Also, the AP CS program, unless it has gotten markedly better since the mid 2000s, is just a basic Java course. I got a 5 on it, and I don't remember anything more complicated than how to implement a singly-linked list.
  - chaosagent 9y ago
    It's still like that. There used to be APCSB for algorithms and data structures but no one took it so they killed it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS? No, only 5% are certified to teach AP Computer Science; AP is a particular, privately governed, college-level advanced placement program. At least back when I was in high school, it wasn't typically the first CS class one would take in High School.
- jldugger 9y ago
  When I was in HS so many years ago, at a relatively affluent suburban high school, AP CS was not offered. We had 2 single semester classes, basic and advanced programming, taught in BASIC and C-style C++. But they weren't AP certified classes, and frankly, I doubt they have the money to recruit and retain instructors. The guidance counselors pretty much told us not to take them back to back freshman year, because then you'd be out of classes to take. Most of the students seemed to know more about programming than the teacher, who was also responsible for teaching accounting. Class period ends up being 10 minutes to do the day's programming assignment and 50 minutes fucking around pen-testing the IT setup trying to run Duke Nukem. One time the kid who's dad worked in district IT mentioned that "when you forget your name badge when you show up for work at Disneyland, they give you one that says 'Dale'. Browsing the global contact directory one day, I came across an account, first name Dale, last name missing. A few guesses later I discovered the password was di$ney, and Dale had quite a few drives mapped it probably shouldn't, like one with the staff directory including home addresses phone numbers and employee IDs. So obviously the real reason Russia outdoes the US is that US targets are too easy to hack ^_^
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
aiw1nt3rs 9y ago
you've heard the word 'hungry' before? ;) desire/poverty + descent education system (especially in classic sciences) + long history of political 'experimentation' in the area might explain the phainomenon
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kilroy123 9y ago
I always thought it was because smart people who will become good programmers are guaranteed to get a nice cushy job. (In the US) In Eastern Europe and especially in Russia that isn't the case. Great cushy jobs are hard to come by. However, there's virtually unlimited opportunity doing shady things or hacking for profit. I once even talked to a Russian developer about this in great length. He came to the US for one such cushy job. I was pretty shocked about how freely he talked about past "shady" jobs. He told me, yes he _could_ make more money but he also didn't like being so unethical. So he came here to be "legit".
gottebp 9y ago
Cold climates encourage indoor activities.
- collyw 9y ago
  or skiing
- Lordarminius 9y ago
  Should be higher up
maxxxxx 9y ago
The devs from Russia I have worked with had a much better mathematical foundation than people from germany or the US. I have never gone to school in Russia but as far as math goes their schooling seems much better
chaosagent 9y ago
The article mentions an "AP Computer Science" curriculum that it claims does not cover programming and is not actually APCS, but is instead AP Computer Science Principles, an "intro to computers" for less stem-oriented students that was introduced last year. The actual APCS curriculum mostly involves learning basic programming constructs and some Java APIs, and is done solely in Java. Also, there used to be AP Computer Science B covering basic algorithms and data structures, but CollegeBoard killed it because barely anyone took it.
kylehotchkiss 9y ago
I was going to guess it has something to do with Russia's youth's relationship with Video Games. thought they don't play lots of games or something. Then I looked at wikipedia, with 5 sources stating how the biggest issue with video games there is piracy[1]. Ethics aside, great way to learn your way around a computer! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_gaming_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_gaming_in_Russia
baybal2 9y ago
Anybody want to make a mini-AMA with me here @_@ ?
sr2 9y ago
Too much emphasis on education and college in this article. Hacking requires 'thinking outside the box'; often called lateral thinking[0]. Formal education in the subject of hacking is nice, but doesn't allow for the creative mind to fully explore systems. There's a phrase: Don't Learn to Hack - Hack to Learn In terms of earning money from hacking, there are tradeoffs made in both whitehat and blackhat hacking. One noticeable tradeoff in blackhat hacking is having no boss, and penetrating a system on your own terms. Whitehat hacking might pay more and be more respectful and a nice little haven where you can avoid jail, but it's often riddled with a rigid framework for getting into systems and doesn't encourage the lateral thinking I previously mentioned. Instead it's a corporate cubicle job where hacking is often automated and routine. On the other hand, there is grey hat hacking which many fall into at some stage to strike a balance, and often balance criminality with a respectful whitehat job that pays well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking
0xbear 9y ago
Russian-American here: in Russia you don't get to choose what to study, mostly. Certainly not in middle or high school -- everyone studies the exact same set of subjects. In college you don't get to choose individual subjects, you choose the profession, and that comes with a set of courses already baked in, some of which you'd never take on your own. Whether you're good or not at something, that's something you cant discover until you're pretty decent at it (see the Suzuki method), so you get exposure to a pretty broad array of subjects, one of which is informatics. I have no doubt this plays a role in exposing more kids to programming. I do not know whether any of the kids make it to the top percentile of "talent". For me (although this is 20+ years in the past) and the majority of my classmates, high school informatics didn't do anything. I already knew vastly more than the teacher, and had a computer of my own, a really shitty one, but it was a computer. The teacher knew it too, so I was allowed not to come to the class, and got "5"s (Russian version of "A"s) automatically. One thing that definitely does help is that kids who suck at school are kicked out after 9th (8th back then) grade, and are expected to get vocational education, whereas those headed for college get 2 years of uninterrupted focus on their math and science at a much higher level than the dumb kids could handle. At least that's how it was with me. A group of us have (illegally) hired our math and physics teachers to (get this!) study advanced material on the weekends. Now that I have a kid of my own, it's hard to even imagine that he would take this kind of concern in his own affairs. He has everything, so he will probably amount to nothing. There's no incentive. It's not "either you get good at something, or you'll clean pig manure for the rest of your life" dichotomy. It's more of a "play computer games all day, and then shake down your parents for cash when you turn 18". Vastly different environment. I would also like to point out, that top engineers almost invariably end up in the West. Russia has the "oil curse" and the "management curse". The oil curse is because in a country so rich with natural resources the taxation and business environment are geared towards those wildly profitable companies, and doing anything else doesn't make sense. The management curse is that managers in Russia typically demand unconditional respect for authority and think they should be much better compensated than an engineer. Both of those things are something a top hacker will almost certainly have problems with. In the West, you're more likely to be listened to and treated as an equal.
- russellbeattie 9y ago
kuroguro 9y ago
Russian culture - especially in business - is a lot more cutthroat than the west. I would argue that it leads to more people picking up engineering skills as it's one of the safest paths. I'm probably biased but the thought "my life might not matter much but at least my skills are in need" is pretty common here next to Russia's border.
omot 9y ago
I think the question we should really be asking ourselves is why so many valuable tech companies hail from the US, specifically the bay area. Having grown up in the Bay Area, there weren't any more special focus on mathematics / computer science in school, in fact we were encouraged to pursue whatever we wanted to pursue. If we felt like we were bad at math, we weren't forced into it, we should only pursue math if we really liked it. Most of my friends never made it past pre-calc, yet top tech talent from Russia come to the US, and end up working at wall street / silicon valley. Sergey Brin comes to mind. I don't think we should really focus on improving our mathematician/hacker pipeline, we should make sure we're cultivating a culture of freedom where people can explore and pursue different fields of academics, and make sure there's no barrier to talent working for us.
- elefanten 9y ago
  I think those are different questions: why should we teach CS and what ecosystem properties create business value. But as for the Silicon Valley question... it gets asked and debated a LOT. Especially here on HN, I'd say.
- samangan 9y ago
  The origins of Silicon Valley being a technological hub go back all the way to WWII and the economy of the early computer industry. So, I feel the USA being an economic and military superpower is a pretty easy explanation for why 'Silicon Valley' exists in the bay area today and not somewhere else. Obviously, there have been many years and many technological revolutions since those early days but there are pretty clear trails of people, and money leading all the way back. As far as trying to answer why so many other countries consistently beat America in math and technology I think a small answer can be gleaned from your statement: "we were encouraged to pursue whatever we wanted to pursue." That is not all that common in many countries and cultures in the world. I think a lot of it has to do with economic or political desperation. I have worked with people who learned how to code because they didn't even have running water in their village in India and programming was a way out. Or more relevant to this story, they lived in a Russian town and got a PhD in engineering so they could come to America and be an engineer. These types of stories are very, very common in the Bay Area. Looking at the education systems is helpful, but I think you need a real driving force to get most people motivated to learn difficult things.
NumberSix 9y ago
What is striking to me is that the table of AP tests taken (2016) in the article clearly states: Calculus AB 302,532 Calculus BC 118,707 for a total of 421,239 students taking this demanding technical subject and exam in 2016 (one year). Undoubtedly, in this day and age of cheap readily available computers with more power than a 1980's Cray supercomputer, most of these students both have computers and have undoubtedly done lots of programming whether they have taken AP Computer Science or not. As for Microsoft, they have announced numerous layoffs of tens of thousands of highly skilled engineers in the last few years, for example: http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-layoffs-of-18000-employees-begin/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-layoffs-of-18000-empl... Many in Finland which consistently ranks TOP in international ratings of education, math, and science.
ivan_ah 9y ago
As a STEM person, I like the STEM-makes-you-a-hacker angle of this piece, but I think a more likely causation factor is the need for software piracy. Most computer users in Eastern Europe do not pay for Windows. They download a pre-cracked installed, or use a serial, or a crack or something. For an entire generation or two, before you'd get access to a computer, you'd have to know how to install a pirated OS on it. Same for all software and media. Piracy, yes, piracy. Terrible, I know, but very motivating. If you learn how to use a computer, you'll have access to stuff. If you don't, then no stuff. But worry not, the Eastern Block is not about to take over the internet. The stupefying site with the blue header has taken over mind share and now nobody is learning anything about anything anymore, anywhere around the world, equally.

142 points by snowy 9y ago

mc32 9y ago

Lots of talent (technical universities, emphasis on science and maths in general), undercompensation at local companies, and inability for international police reach (extradition from RU for "cyber" crimes is not routine). So a nice opportunity for hackers so long as they don't bother the local state and act outwardly.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

Sounds like job security for me.

rndmize 9y ago

I think this stems in part from the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture we have in the US, where its almost expected that most kids won't be good at mathematics. The side effect of this, imo, is that fields that are close to math or dependent on it (physics, stats, CS, etc.) pick up a piece of that stigma and idea that its acceptable to be bad at these things. I've seen occasional articles about quants on wall street and how a good number of them are Russian/Eastern European (this kind of thing - https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-21/how-russia-has-lost-its-mathematical-minds-to-the-west https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-01-21/how-russi... ) and I feel this is another directly related element - having a strong math culture allows you to have a strong CS culture. I've been happy to see that in the last decade, the US is starting to start bringing the pieces we need to get that kind of culture back - the popularity of startups and programming with the media that bring them to the attention of the average person. Space is cool again, and movies like "The Martian" are, imo, absolutely critical in making science/engineering something worth striving for. Hopefully we'll see some of this trickle down to our educational systems in the near future.

pm90 9y ago
Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it. Eventually, things like Khan Academy might prove a lot more useful in making math and science a culturally desirable field.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Space was always cool. Math, not so much, simply because in the race to catch up on the space race, wayy too much emphasis was placed on teaching math instead of teaching math well, which turned a lot of people off of it. I think the problem is expecting some "nice" (friendly, etc) way of teaching math, which dilutes their content (like Disney-fying a novel). The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there.
  - k0doque 9y ago
    I advise taking a look at the mir titles or the Israel Gelfand books. Looking from it, Russian are really good at producing top notch popular science. Tough there is no fry, their math book are almost game like, with few carefully built example and very clear explanation using only some diagram when needed (consequently their book are quite small) and the exercise are absolutely not rote based, except the first few exercice, and even then they all serve to illustrate a specific part of a concept, all the others are puzzle like problem. Putting lots of full color image is not making math "fun", well built and interesting problem is.
    - pm90 9y ago
      OMG I LOVED THE MIR BOOKS! Yes, they were incredibly simple, weren't littered with images, only essential diagrams. And the English translations were very good... I can only imagine what the Russian language versions were.
  - watwut 9y ago
    > The Russians we are comparing here, don't have any "better" teaching methods. They just suck it up and study what's there. Not entirely. A lot of it is problem solving exercises as opposed to rote solve 20 exactly same problems in row seen in us books. Memorization won't help you solve those exercises. There is also les focus on arithmetic and more on equations much sooner. If you actually like math, you will prefer Russian exercises, cause they challenge you.
- deleted 9y ago
maxxxxx 9y ago
the "oh I'm so bad at math" culture So true. It's cool to say you are bad at math.
ardit33 9y ago
Apart from the former communist math teaching being much better, I think it is cultural as well. Being an engineer in a former communist country was (is) a ticket to good life, similar lifestyle to a doctor or a lawyer. In the US being an engineer is seen as boring, and something only nerdy un-socialable people do. Also there are more attractive alternatives to pursue for smart people in the US. Basically, it boils down that a society will produce the type of talent that it values (by both training, and steering talented folks to certain disciplines). I'd say it is the same reason the US sucks at producing soccer talents, event compared to much smaller countries like Croatia or Belgium.
- jrimbault 9y ago
  On the other hand, a lack of math teachers could be explained because people who have decent math skills can now live off that skill by being an engineer much more easily than before when they would have been math teachers.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    So a society with a paucity of math skilled people means less teachers with math skills which perpetuates the cycle?
  - Fezzik 9y ago
    That was my thought. I wonder what the backgrounds are of Russian teachers/professors of mathematics? I do not know oodles of math teachers, but all of my teachers as a kid, and friends who teach math now, received a four year degree on mathematics and went right in to teaching. They were very uninspiring (career-wise) people, with little knowledge of how math is applied outside of a high-school/university context.
  - JBlue42 9y ago
    Anecdotes from growing up in the rural US. In high school: - We went through three math teachers one year because they could find less stressful, better-paying work as accountants. - My AP Stats teacher had to work weekends at Best Buy.
nopinsight 9y ago
It seems math textbooks in the US are 2-3 grade levels easier than those in East Asia. SAT Math is considered a piece of cake even by non-top but good students there. I heard Russian math is similarly rigorous. This reduces the level of logical thinking skills most American children get to practice from school. Programming well requires good abstract and logical thinking which is easier to develop from a young age. Thus the US math education may in effect reduce the chances of many people achieving their potentials. Tangentially, can someone knowledgeable shed light on why American math curriculum is significantly easier than those in East Asia and Russia?
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Logical thinking skills are the gateway to independent thought. Too much of that and the proles could stage a revolt.
  - webnrrd2k 9y ago
    Wouldn't that be true in Russia and East Asia as well?
    - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
      Except their citizens are aware that their freedom is constrained. Americans are deluded by the "land of the free" mantra. The powers that be don't want to face a collective red pill movement.
- arkades 9y ago
  The 2-3 grade delta sounds about right. I was a good but not too math student in (Eastern European) country before moving here. I Didn't have to open a math book again for about 3 years. Most of my friends from the same generation of immigrants would give the same number. More was simply expected of us. Not "hoped for" or "aspired to", but expected. And parents weren't at loggerheads with teachers; what teachers said was law. So if a teacher said you were learning the multiplication table this week, parents didn't argue it was too much, or encourage you to "do your best." You'd be drilled on those times tables until you wanted to kill someone, but you'd damn well be expected to have them memorized by the end of the week. The idea that people were driven by good money is a western misinterpretation, or whatever the cultural equivalent of anachronism is. My grandmother used to scold my aunt for marrying an engineer instead of a tin knocker, like my mother did, because tin knockers brought home the real money. I think those two elements - expectations and parental cooperation - don't get enough credit, by far.
placeybordeaux 9y ago
Yeah it was frustrating to see a good friend of mine that has taught himself to make basic computer games in gamemaker, that can play competitive MTG (notable due to the large state machine you have to simulate in your head) and can pick up new systems quickly shyed away from CS because he'd need to take a math class.
FTA 9y ago
This sounds a lot like stereotype threat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat). I'd say though, rather than "it's acceptable to be bad at these things," people instead avoid it _because_ they feel they will do poorly and fail at it if they try.

coldcode 9y ago

In 1973 a female teacher (I think a teacher) at my high school got funding to start a computer science (i.e. programming) class in my high school. We learned to code in Basic and Fortran(interpreted!) on a teletype machine with a paper tape reader, connected to some time sharing system, plus got industry visitors and some field trips. Today I am a programmer because of this. If someone can put that together back then you can do it now.

vrutkovs 9y ago

This article may have a point about poor state of basic computer education in US, but its just blindly guesses the reasons on the topic of why so many hackers are from ex-USSR countries. A pretty good level of CS doesn't help here much - take a look at Europe, for instance. The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes students think about the weak points of any system, gives them a chance to train their skills etc. The side effect of this culture is much higher level of corruption and financial crimes

eklavya 9y ago
When you say the article is making a blind guess, can you substantiate that your own hypothesis is not one?
xor1 9y ago
>The secret ingredient is a culture of cheating. Its absolutely fine to cheat on any level of exam (unless you get caught, obviously). This makes students think about the weak points of any system, gives them a chance to train their skills etc. The side effect of this culture is much higher level of corruption and financial crimes If your theory was true, Chinese devs and hackers would have the same reputation for prowess as their Russian counterparts. I like Sergey Aleynikov's explanation: Russians had a reputation for being the best programmers on Wall Street, and Serge thought he knew why: they had been forced to learn programming without the luxury of endless computer time. “In Russia, time on the computer was measured in minutes,” he says. “When you write a program, you are given a tiny time slot to make it work. Consequently we learned to write the code in a way that minimized the amount of debugging. And so you had to think about it a lot before you committed it to paper. . . . The ready availability of computer time creates this mode of working where you just have an idea and type it and maybe erase it 10 times. Good Russian programmers, they tend to have had that one experience at some time in the past: the experience of limited access to computer time.” http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...
- digi_owl 9y ago

tryitnow 9y ago

> although there currently are just over 42,000 high schools in the United States, only 2,100 of them were certified to teach the AP computer science course in 2011. This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS? I wonder if this could be addressed at the state level. Why couldn't California mandate a more Russian style approach - perhaps even with an entirely new exam and curriculum since the CS AP exam doesn't appear to cut it. Computer Science is just as important as language skills now, we need to start acting like it.

douche 9y ago
A lot of schools don't have the budget for gym class. Also, the AP CS program, unless it has gotten markedly better since the mid 2000s, is just a basic Java course. I got a 5 on it, and I don't remember anything more complicated than how to implement a singly-linked list.
- chaosagent 9y ago
  It's still like that. There used to be APCSB for algorithms and data structures but no one took it so they killed it.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> This boggles my mind. Only 5% of high schools are even certified to teach CS? No, only 5% are certified to teach AP Computer Science; AP is a particular, privately governed, college-level advanced placement program. At least back when I was in high school, it wasn't typically the first CS class one would take in High School.
jldugger 9y ago
When I was in HS so many years ago, at a relatively affluent suburban high school, AP CS was not offered. We had 2 single semester classes, basic and advanced programming, taught in BASIC and C-style C++. But they weren't AP certified classes, and frankly, I doubt they have the money to recruit and retain instructors. The guidance counselors pretty much told us not to take them back to back freshman year, because then you'd be out of classes to take. Most of the students seemed to know more about programming than the teacher, who was also responsible for teaching accounting. Class period ends up being 10 minutes to do the day's programming assignment and 50 minutes fucking around pen-testing the IT setup trying to run Duke Nukem. One time the kid who's dad worked in district IT mentioned that "when you forget your name badge when you show up for work at Disneyland, they give you one that says 'Dale'. Browsing the global contact directory one day, I came across an account, first name Dale, last name missing. A few guesses later I discovered the password was di$ney, and Dale had quite a few drives mapped it probably shouldn't, like one with the staff directory including home addresses phone numbers and employee IDs. So obviously the real reason Russia outdoes the US is that US targets are too easy to hack ^_^

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aiw1nt3rs 9y ago

you've heard the word 'hungry' before? ;) desire/poverty + descent education system (especially in classic sciences) + long history of political 'experimentation' in the area might explain the phainomenon

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kilroy123 9y ago

I always thought it was because smart people who will become good programmers are guaranteed to get a nice cushy job. (In the US) In Eastern Europe and especially in Russia that isn't the case. Great cushy jobs are hard to come by. However, there's virtually unlimited opportunity doing shady things or hacking for profit. I once even talked to a Russian developer about this in great length. He came to the US for one such cushy job. I was pretty shocked about how freely he talked about past "shady" jobs. He told me, yes he _could_ make more money but he also didn't like being so unethical. So he came here to be "legit".

gottebp 9y ago

Cold climates encourage indoor activities.

collyw 9y ago
or skiing
Lordarminius 9y ago
Should be higher up

maxxxxx 9y ago

The devs from Russia I have worked with had a much better mathematical foundation than people from germany or the US. I have never gone to school in Russia but as far as math goes their schooling seems much better

chaosagent 9y ago

The article mentions an "AP Computer Science" curriculum that it claims does not cover programming and is not actually APCS, but is instead AP Computer Science Principles, an "intro to computers" for less stem-oriented students that was introduced last year. The actual APCS curriculum mostly involves learning basic programming constructs and some Java APIs, and is done solely in Java. Also, there used to be AP Computer Science B covering basic algorithms and data structures, but CollegeBoard killed it because barely anyone took it.

kylehotchkiss 9y ago

I was going to guess it has something to do with Russia's youth's relationship with Video Games. thought they don't play lots of games or something. Then I looked at wikipedia, with 5 sources stating how the biggest issue with video games there is piracy[1]. Ethics aside, great way to learn your way around a computer! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_gaming_in_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_gaming_in_Russia

baybal2 9y ago

Anybody want to make a mini-AMA with me here @_@ ?

sr2 9y ago

Too much emphasis on education and college in this article. Hacking requires 'thinking outside the box'; often called lateral thinking[0]. Formal education in the subject of hacking is nice, but doesn't allow for the creative mind to fully explore systems. There's a phrase: Don't Learn to Hack - Hack to Learn In terms of earning money from hacking, there are tradeoffs made in both whitehat and blackhat hacking. One noticeable tradeoff in blackhat hacking is having no boss, and penetrating a system on your own terms. Whitehat hacking might pay more and be more respectful and a nice little haven where you can avoid jail, but it's often riddled with a rigid framework for getting into systems and doesn't encourage the lateral thinking I previously mentioned. Instead it's a corporate cubicle job where hacking is often automated and routine. On the other hand, there is grey hat hacking which many fall into at some stage to strike a balance, and often balance criminality with a respectful whitehat job that pays well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

0xbear 9y ago

Russian-American here: in Russia you don't get to choose what to study, mostly. Certainly not in middle or high school -- everyone studies the exact same set of subjects. In college you don't get to choose individual subjects, you choose the profession, and that comes with a set of courses already baked in, some of which you'd never take on your own. Whether you're good or not at something, that's something you cant discover until you're pretty decent at it (see the Suzuki method), so you get exposure to a pretty broad array of subjects, one of which is informatics. I have no doubt this plays a role in exposing more kids to programming. I do not know whether any of the kids make it to the top percentile of "talent". For me (although this is 20+ years in the past) and the majority of my classmates, high school informatics didn't do anything. I already knew vastly more than the teacher, and had a computer of my own, a really shitty one, but it was a computer. The teacher knew it too, so I was allowed not to come to the class, and got "5"s (Russian version of "A"s) automatically. One thing that definitely does help is that kids who suck at school are kicked out after 9th (8th back then) grade, and are expected to get vocational education, whereas those headed for college get 2 years of uninterrupted focus on their math and science at a much higher level than the dumb kids could handle. At least that's how it was with me. A group of us have (illegally) hired our math and physics teachers to (get this!) study advanced material on the weekends. Now that I have a kid of my own, it's hard to even imagine that he would take this kind of concern in his own affairs. He has everything, so he will probably amount to nothing. There's no incentive. It's not "either you get good at something, or you'll clean pig manure for the rest of your life" dichotomy. It's more of a "play computer games all day, and then shake down your parents for cash when you turn 18". Vastly different environment. I would also like to point out, that top engineers almost invariably end up in the West. Russia has the "oil curse" and the "management curse". The oil curse is because in a country so rich with natural resources the taxation and business environment are geared towards those wildly profitable companies, and doing anything else doesn't make sense. The management curse is that managers in Russia typically demand unconditional respect for authority and think they should be much better compensated than an engineer. Both of those things are something a top hacker will almost certainly have problems with. In the West, you're more likely to be listened to and treated as an equal.

russellbeattie 9y ago

kuroguro 9y ago

Russian culture - especially in business - is a lot more cutthroat than the west. I would argue that it leads to more people picking up engineering skills as it's one of the safest paths. I'm probably biased but the thought "my life might not matter much but at least my skills are in need" is pretty common here next to Russia's border.

omot 9y ago

I think the question we should really be asking ourselves is why so many valuable tech companies hail from the US, specifically the bay area. Having grown up in the Bay Area, there weren't any more special focus on mathematics / computer science in school, in fact we were encouraged to pursue whatever we wanted to pursue. If we felt like we were bad at math, we weren't forced into it, we should only pursue math if we really liked it. Most of my friends never made it past pre-calc, yet top tech talent from Russia come to the US, and end up working at wall street / silicon valley. Sergey Brin comes to mind. I don't think we should really focus on improving our mathematician/hacker pipeline, we should make sure we're cultivating a culture of freedom where people can explore and pursue different fields of academics, and make sure there's no barrier to talent working for us.

elefanten 9y ago
I think those are different questions: why should we teach CS and what ecosystem properties create business value. But as for the Silicon Valley question... it gets asked and debated a LOT. Especially here on HN, I'd say.
samangan 9y ago
The origins of Silicon Valley being a technological hub go back all the way to WWII and the economy of the early computer industry. So, I feel the USA being an economic and military superpower is a pretty easy explanation for why 'Silicon Valley' exists in the bay area today and not somewhere else. Obviously, there have been many years and many technological revolutions since those early days but there are pretty clear trails of people, and money leading all the way back. As far as trying to answer why so many other countries consistently beat America in math and technology I think a small answer can be gleaned from your statement: "we were encouraged to pursue whatever we wanted to pursue." That is not all that common in many countries and cultures in the world. I think a lot of it has to do with economic or political desperation. I have worked with people who learned how to code because they didn't even have running water in their village in India and programming was a way out. Or more relevant to this story, they lived in a Russian town and got a PhD in engineering so they could come to America and be an engineer. These types of stories are very, very common in the Bay Area. Looking at the education systems is helpful, but I think you need a real driving force to get most people motivated to learn difficult things.

NumberSix 9y ago

What is striking to me is that the table of AP tests taken (2016) in the article clearly states: Calculus AB 302,532 Calculus BC 118,707 for a total of 421,239 students taking this demanding technical subject and exam in 2016 (one year). Undoubtedly, in this day and age of cheap readily available computers with more power than a 1980's Cray supercomputer, most of these students both have computers and have undoubtedly done lots of programming whether they have taken AP Computer Science or not. As for Microsoft, they have announced numerous layoffs of tens of thousands of highly skilled engineers in the last few years, for example: http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-layoffs-of-18000-employees-begin/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-layoffs-of-18000-empl... Many in Finland which consistently ranks TOP in international ratings of education, math, and science.

ivan_ah 9y ago

As a STEM person, I like the STEM-makes-you-a-hacker angle of this piece, but I think a more likely causation factor is the need for software piracy. Most computer users in Eastern Europe do not pay for Windows. They download a pre-cracked installed, or use a serial, or a crack or something. For an entire generation or two, before you'd get access to a computer, you'd have to know how to install a pirated OS on it. Same for all software and media. Piracy, yes, piracy. Terrible, I know, but very motivating. If you learn how to use a computer, you'll have access to stuff. If you don't, then no stuff. But worry not, the Eastern Block is not about to take over the internet. The stupefying site with the blue header has taken over mind share and now nobody is learning anything about anything anymore, anywhere around the world, equally.