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Everytime I read about Unicode quirks, I end up thinking that the relative simplicity of the English alphabet played a large role in making the USA the computin

Everytime I read about Unicode quirks, I end up thinking that the relative simplicity of the English alphabet played a large role in making the USA the computing superpower that it is today. * You can easily represent the common symbols in a few number of bits (7bits in case of ASCII). * It is relatively easy to do a case-insensitive comparison. * With the exception of numerical strings, sorting and ordering is relatively straightforward. This allowed the early software/hardware developers to create simple systems that were good enough to be useful to consumers.

silvestrov 7y ago
No. Those 3 points are not that important. West Europe works using ISO-Latin-1. Many European countries even had a national 7-bit version. We also had our own computer companies, but they died out because they couldn't grow. The 2 main reason are: 1) you have one Sillicon Valley in USA, so all competent people were in one location. If you wanted to start Intel/Apple/Google in Denmark you'll run out of Wozniaks even before you got going because they are spread out all over the map. 2) All of USA speaks the same language, so you can easily do complex communication with companies in other states (e.g. Intel/Gateway in Texas). Getting a French person to speak good English in the 60-70'ies was a, ahem, challenge. There is no Sillicon Valley in Europe precisly because there is no single place, and therefore Europe miss out on the "everybody important in same place" effects. China's government pointed to one place at the map when they wanted a SV. That's why China got Shenzhen. Europe/EU still can't do that politically.
- pklausler 7y ago
  Few of the pioneering computer companies in the 60's were in Sillicon (sic) Valley. And their engineers weren't all in one other single place in the US, either. (How the Twin Cities lost out to Silicon Valley in the high-performance computing race is a fascinating story, but that involves just a few of the many computer companies that were around in those times.)
  - mlinksva 7y ago
    Agree, there are several places in the US that could've been (or remained more peer to) Silicon Valley. I was not aware of depth of Twin Cities story. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/resources/MHHC/ http://www.cbi.umn.edu/resources/MHHC/ looks interesting. If there's other reading on that you recommend I'd love a pointer.
    - pklausler 7y ago
      A fun read is https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Supercomputer/dp/0471048852 https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Su...
- chrchang523 7y ago
  Regarding point 1: even today, the two highest-market-cap tech companies are based in the Seattle area, not Silicon Valley.
wodenokoto 7y ago
There was once a great post on ready comparing home computers with Japanese counter parts, and how much more expensive they were due to extra memory to hold the alphabet, as well as how unnatural typing was (could only type katakana and latin, still needed more memory than the US version - those kind of things) The authors conclusion was that this turned Japan into a single-use device nation (because a nintendo doesn't need you to type) and the west much more focused on PC's. I think he even went so far as to say the iPod couldn't have been invented in Japan, because it was too dependant on a PC to get music onto it (the article was pre-iphone, or around that time)
- jacobush 7y ago
  Heck I can buy that. Only recently has it been feasible for a netizen to skip computers and go only smart phone.
marcosdumay 7y ago
> It is relatively easy to do a case-insensitive comparison. Case-insensitive comparison only became a relevant concept in informatics because it was easy on the countries that advanced on it first. > With the exception of numerical strings, sorting and ordering is relatively straightforward. That's another one inverting causation. If informatics developed on a place where different kinds of sorting made sense, we would be using those different kinds. I do think your point about the small alphabet stands. But keep in mind that it applies to all languages that took influence from the ancient Greek, what is basically only excludes South-Eastern Asia.

silvestrov 7y ago

No. Those 3 points are not that important. West Europe works using ISO-Latin-1. Many European countries even had a national 7-bit version. We also had our own computer companies, but they died out because they couldn't grow. The 2 main reason are: 1) you have one Sillicon Valley in USA, so all competent people were in one location. If you wanted to start Intel/Apple/Google in Denmark you'll run out of Wozniaks even before you got going because they are spread out all over the map. 2) All of USA speaks the same language, so you can easily do complex communication with companies in other states (e.g. Intel/Gateway in Texas). Getting a French person to speak good English in the 60-70'ies was a, ahem, challenge. There is no Sillicon Valley in Europe precisly because there is no single place, and therefore Europe miss out on the "everybody important in same place" effects. China's government pointed to one place at the map when they wanted a SV. That's why China got Shenzhen. Europe/EU still can't do that politically.

pklausler 7y ago
Few of the pioneering computer companies in the 60's were in Sillicon (sic) Valley. And their engineers weren't all in one other single place in the US, either. (How the Twin Cities lost out to Silicon Valley in the high-performance computing race is a fascinating story, but that involves just a few of the many computer companies that were around in those times.)
- mlinksva 7y ago
  Agree, there are several places in the US that could've been (or remained more peer to) Silicon Valley. I was not aware of depth of Twin Cities story. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/resources/MHHC/ http://www.cbi.umn.edu/resources/MHHC/ looks interesting. If there's other reading on that you recommend I'd love a pointer.
  - pklausler 7y ago
    A fun read is https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Supercomputer/dp/0471048852 https://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards-Su...
chrchang523 7y ago
Regarding point 1: even today, the two highest-market-cap tech companies are based in the Seattle area, not Silicon Valley.

wodenokoto 7y ago

There was once a great post on ready comparing home computers with Japanese counter parts, and how much more expensive they were due to extra memory to hold the alphabet, as well as how unnatural typing was (could only type katakana and latin, still needed more memory than the US version - those kind of things) The authors conclusion was that this turned Japan into a single-use device nation (because a nintendo doesn't need you to type) and the west much more focused on PC's. I think he even went so far as to say the iPod couldn't have been invented in Japan, because it was too dependant on a PC to get music onto it (the article was pre-iphone, or around that time)

jacobush 7y ago
Heck I can buy that. Only recently has it been feasible for a netizen to skip computers and go only smart phone.

marcosdumay 7y ago

> It is relatively easy to do a case-insensitive comparison. Case-insensitive comparison only became a relevant concept in informatics because it was easy on the countries that advanced on it first. > With the exception of numerical strings, sorting and ordering is relatively straightforward. That's another one inverting causation. If informatics developed on a place where different kinds of sorting made sense, we would be using those different kinds. I do think your point about the small alphabet stands. But keep in mind that it applies to all languages that took influence from the ancient Greek, what is basically only excludes South-Eastern Asia.