5 ms·

France's safety net is shit for auto entrepreneurs so this could explain that.

by tnzn 9y ago

Iv 9y ago
Healthcare is still free. Let's stay a bit smug in front of our mainly US audience.
flexie 9y ago
Still doesn't explain why I can't name a hugely popular programming language, library or framework created by a French programmer but several by Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch, all small countries but where English is a very strong second language. I'm sure there are great French programmers and programming languages, but doesn't is strike you as remarkable that there are not more? From a country of 5 million (Denmark) you got the creators or cocreators of C++, C#, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Turbo Pascal etc. From a country of 60 million you got ...? France is a a power house in so many other engineering fields like nuclear power, auto industry, aviation etc so they clearly have engineering talent. But in software, not so much.
- sambe 9y ago
  Does England produce a lot of languages/frameworks? I encounter quite a few French developers internationally (with relatively bad English skills...)
  - yen223 9y ago
    Off the top of my head, Haskell and possibly ML has British origins.
  - flexie 9y ago
    I can only think of Coral. But then again Prolog is French :-)
- galeaspablo 9y ago
  Symfony.
- rjsw 9y ago
  How about OCaml, .NET, Interface Builder for NeXTSTEP/OSX. There are French programmers in all the opensource projects that I'm involved in.
- nnq 9y ago
  There's a ton of French influence in software: Symfony, OCaml, lots of Java stuff... But I treat "made in France" like a warning label for anything software, hard to explain exactly why :) I guess it might be because they have very few self-thought people (probably because university is decent and free) that have that "intuition for how to simplify stuff and make it obvious and grok-able" (academic education tends to kill this "intuition" in people). Also, there's a kind of cultural "hate" for KISS and "complexity reduction" in general - they tend to view complexity as an asset somehow, quite a messed-up mindset imho...
  - xfer 9y ago
    Yes, PHP is a very well-thought language compared to Ocaml, right? Really KISS principle. /s There are lots of incredible good software and research (mostly out of INRIA) from France.
    - nnq 9y ago
      Did I say anything about PHP?! I mentioned Symfony but that's contrary too the point (and a fine example of over-engineering, btw...). And Ocaml seems cool, though Haskell people see it like "eager Haskell with too many features and complexity and syntax on top". I took a look at the Ocsigen Ocaml web framework long ago though, and I was like "jeeez, wtff"... the language may seem cool, but that thing... ugh... But I can't really have an opinion on that since the only truly functional languages I've really played with were dynamic (Clojure and Erlang), static + functional is not really my area of experience.
      - xfer 9y ago
        Haskell people see Ocaml as a language with too many features and complexity? really? Haskell, a language with a billion extensions? Have you ever tried compiling ghc? I don't know about ocsigen(i don't do web development), but i guess all web frameworks are more complex than they need to be. I haven't even mentioned all the formal verification stuff(coq, a verified C compiler, frama-c etc.) that come from inria. I mentioned PHP because the GP was saying languages like PHP that comes from denmark etc., but nothing from France.
- valesco 9y ago
  There's VLC too.
- yannovitch 9y ago
  I don't have immediately all the examples in my head but one which comes to mind is Docker, created by a bunch of french people including Solomon Hykes. It's not like Docker appears every single day on Hackernews, uh ;) ?

France's safety net is shit for auto entrepreneurs so this could explain that.

by tnzn 9y ago

France's safety net is shit for auto entrepreneurs so this could explain that.

Iv 9y ago

Healthcare is still free. Let's stay a bit smug in front of our mainly US audience.

flexie 9y ago

Still doesn't explain why I can't name a hugely popular programming language, library or framework created by a French programmer but several by Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Dutch, all small countries but where English is a very strong second language. I'm sure there are great French programmers and programming languages, but doesn't is strike you as remarkable that there are not more? From a country of 5 million (Denmark) you got the creators or cocreators of C++, C#, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Turbo Pascal etc. From a country of 60 million you got ...? France is a a power house in so many other engineering fields like nuclear power, auto industry, aviation etc so they clearly have engineering talent. But in software, not so much.

sambe 9y ago
Does England produce a lot of languages/frameworks? I encounter quite a few French developers internationally (with relatively bad English skills...)
- yen223 9y ago
  Off the top of my head, Haskell and possibly ML has British origins.
- flexie 9y ago
  I can only think of Coral. But then again Prolog is French :-)
galeaspablo 9y ago
Symfony.
rjsw 9y ago
How about OCaml, .NET, Interface Builder for NeXTSTEP/OSX. There are French programmers in all the opensource projects that I'm involved in.
nnq 9y ago
There's a ton of French influence in software: Symfony, OCaml, lots of Java stuff... But I treat "made in France" like a warning label for anything software, hard to explain exactly why :) I guess it might be because they have very few self-thought people (probably because university is decent and free) that have that "intuition for how to simplify stuff and make it obvious and grok-able" (academic education tends to kill this "intuition" in people). Also, there's a kind of cultural "hate" for KISS and "complexity reduction" in general - they tend to view complexity as an asset somehow, quite a messed-up mindset imho...
- xfer 9y ago
  Yes, PHP is a very well-thought language compared to Ocaml, right? Really KISS principle. /s There are lots of incredible good software and research (mostly out of INRIA) from France.
  - nnq 9y ago
    Did I say anything about PHP?! I mentioned Symfony but that's contrary too the point (and a fine example of over-engineering, btw...). And Ocaml seems cool, though Haskell people see it like "eager Haskell with too many features and complexity and syntax on top". I took a look at the Ocsigen Ocaml web framework long ago though, and I was like "jeeez, wtff"... the language may seem cool, but that thing... ugh... But I can't really have an opinion on that since the only truly functional languages I've really played with were dynamic (Clojure and Erlang), static + functional is not really my area of experience.
    - xfer 9y ago
      Haskell people see Ocaml as a language with too many features and complexity? really? Haskell, a language with a billion extensions? Have you ever tried compiling ghc? I don't know about ocsigen(i don't do web development), but i guess all web frameworks are more complex than they need to be. I haven't even mentioned all the formal verification stuff(coq, a verified C compiler, frama-c etc.) that come from inria. I mentioned PHP because the GP was saying languages like PHP that comes from denmark etc., but nothing from France.
valesco 9y ago
There's VLC too.
yannovitch 9y ago
I don't have immediately all the examples in my head but one which comes to mind is Docker, created by a bunch of french people including Solomon Hykes. It's not like Docker appears every single day on Hackernews, uh ;) ?