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Most development at very large companies happens by hordes of people who call themselves developers but do not care about development and barely understand anyt

Most development at very large companies happens by hordes of people who call themselves developers but do not care about development and barely understand anything they are doing. Most coding happens by copying and pasting from Stack* and then restarting the application hundreds of times and tinkering with the code mindlessly until it happens to work. Anything besides getting the "happy path" (sic!) to work is a secondary concern. Add to it that most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy and are super quick to drop any quality standards to meet deadlines. And the management that likewise does not value quality besides things that can be easily seen and typically does not tolerate any delays for anything that is not absolutely necessary. I worked for a well known, huge Korean company. When I was there I learned they shipped a mass produced device with a telnet server with a simple default password. This wasn't done for any evil purpose -- the development team decided this would improve their ability to debug any production problems they might face. They were not trusting their own code and were looking for a quick and easy solution to deal with inevitable deluge of support tickets.

irogers 4y ago
Fwiw, this would fail Android's Compatibility Test Suite: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/cts/+/3ece5ae7a51d64821da485c5dd7953115f776675/tests/tests/security/src/android/security/cts/ListeningPortsTest.java#34 https://android.googlesource.com/platform/cts/+/3ece5ae7a51d...
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Not necessarily. There are various ways to conceal a listening service, for example through knocking protocol.
  - VectorLock 4y ago
    If you're implementing a knocking protocol, you probably know enough to change the default password.
rubicon33 4y ago
How is this isolated to Asia? As a developer in the USA, I’ve seen prioritization of deadlines over quality in nearly every org I’ve worked at. We would probably all love to hand write encryption algorithms for data transfer, or beautiful animations on user interactions, or perfectly graceful fault handling, or 100% test coverage. The reality is that kind of work takes far longer than most employers are willing to wait. I doubt heavily that it’s the engineers love of coding that is lacking, rather the employers patience.
- hef19898 4y ago
  The more an org talks about not cutting corners, as a rule of thumb, the more corner cutting is going on.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
  >We would probably all love to hand write encryption algorithms for data transfer Yikes. Funny that you mention this, because it’s precisely the kind of thing that one would expect from this sort of “talent”, and not from real engineers. No. One does not hand-write encryption algorithms, unless they are Daniel Bernstein or similar.
jpoesen 4y ago
"most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy" -> You did a casual racism there, unless you can back up your claim with non-anecdotal evidence.
- audessuscest 4y ago
  He said clearly that he talks from experience. Do you want a peer-reviewed paper to back his claim?
  - jpoesen 4y ago
    And I clearly asked if he has non-anecdotal evidence to back up his claim.
  - boruto 4y ago
    There was post some years ago how teslas code is a mess. Do you attribute the quality of that code to blue eyed Europeans?
    - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
      No, we attribute that to startup culture’s cavalier attitude towards code quality. Asian cultures’ have similarly cavalier attitude towards privacy. Noone said anything about races. Asia is a continent.
      - acka 4y ago
        Continents don't have cultures (and neither do ethnicities), people do. So what is your point again?
        aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
        The point is that the statement “Asians value privacy less” doesn’t talk about “Asians” as a racial group, rather, it merely observes that for whatever historical/cultural/sociological reasons, a particular group of people, whom happen to live in a certain area of the globe, might be less predisposed to raise concerns about the privacy implications of their software engineering practices. Thus the claim that the original comment was racist is false in my opinion. Another argument against this claim would be the fact that Asian software engineers (here “Asian” is used in the racial sense) raised in Western countries with a strong culture of privacy, seem to be just as privacy conscious as their Caucasian counterparts.
sho_hn 4y ago
> Add to it that most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy and are super quick to drop any quality standards to meet deadlines. Having lived and worked in South Korea for 4 years, I can't confirm this to be true. My Korean colleages were no less diligent than the ones I now have in Germany, on average. It's true that pressure is high and projects are often run in an air of permanent crisis mode to keep the pressure up, though. If corners get cut the decision usually comes from above. I do systems engineering on operating systems and HMI for consumer electronics. In Korea it was for smart TVs and industrial equipment control, in Germany for cars.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
headsupernova 4y ago
Amazing stuff here folks - this big brained developer just generalized a literal continent of billions of individual people and is the top comment on smart people site hacker news dot com
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't react to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. It just makes everything worse. Also, while I have you: can you please not use HN primarily for political/ideological arguments? It looks like that's what your account has been doing, and it's not the intended use of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
mistrial9 4y ago
dang 4y ago
> most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy and are super quick to drop any quality standards to meet deadlines You started a hellish, tedious flamewar with this. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid here. Please edit general putdowns, casual swipes, and flamebait out of your HN comments, and stick to what you can legitimately say from your own experience. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- twawaaay 4y ago
  Hi dang. But this is my 22 years of experience in software development working for various companies from all over the world, including a number of companies in Asia. I have experience working directly for about 30 companies and indirectly for about 50 companies. I worked for a core security team for one of the largest phone makers from Korea. I don't want to name the company but when I say the actual privacy was not a huge concern this is actually my own experience working with them. These are facts just like saying most Americans are overweight. You might not like it, but that does not change the fact. Here, some more explanation about groups of people, facts, prejudice and racism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32480914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32480914
  - dang 4y ago
    Unless your 22 years of experience included observations of "most developers from Asia", then your comment went far beyond your experience in a way that was guaranteed to be provocative. It's hardly a borderline call to say that that is flamebait. Flamebait with racial/ethnic/national generalization is just about the biggest provocation there is. It's bog-standard forum moderation to ask users not to do this. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

irogers 4y ago

Fwiw, this would fail Android's Compatibility Test Suite: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/cts/+/3ece5ae7a51d64821da485c5dd7953115f776675/tests/tests/security/src/android/security/cts/ListeningPortsTest.java#34 https://android.googlesource.com/platform/cts/+/3ece5ae7a51d...

twawaaay 4y ago
Not necessarily. There are various ways to conceal a listening service, for example through knocking protocol.
- VectorLock 4y ago
  If you're implementing a knocking protocol, you probably know enough to change the default password.

rubicon33 4y ago

How is this isolated to Asia? As a developer in the USA, I’ve seen prioritization of deadlines over quality in nearly every org I’ve worked at. We would probably all love to hand write encryption algorithms for data transfer, or beautiful animations on user interactions, or perfectly graceful fault handling, or 100% test coverage. The reality is that kind of work takes far longer than most employers are willing to wait. I doubt heavily that it’s the engineers love of coding that is lacking, rather the employers patience.

hef19898 4y ago
The more an org talks about not cutting corners, as a rule of thumb, the more corner cutting is going on.
aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
>We would probably all love to hand write encryption algorithms for data transfer Yikes. Funny that you mention this, because it’s precisely the kind of thing that one would expect from this sort of “talent”, and not from real engineers. No. One does not hand-write encryption algorithms, unless they are Daniel Bernstein or similar.

jpoesen 4y ago

"most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy" -> You did a casual racism there, unless you can back up your claim with non-anecdotal evidence.

audessuscest 4y ago
He said clearly that he talks from experience. Do you want a peer-reviewed paper to back his claim?
- jpoesen 4y ago
  And I clearly asked if he has non-anecdotal evidence to back up his claim.
- boruto 4y ago
  There was post some years ago how teslas code is a mess. Do you attribute the quality of that code to blue eyed Europeans?
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
    No, we attribute that to startup culture’s cavalier attitude towards code quality. Asian cultures’ have similarly cavalier attitude towards privacy. Noone said anything about races. Asia is a continent.
    - acka 4y ago
      Continents don't have cultures (and neither do ethnicities), people do. So what is your point again?
      - aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
        The point is that the statement “Asians value privacy less” doesn’t talk about “Asians” as a racial group, rather, it merely observes that for whatever historical/cultural/sociological reasons, a particular group of people, whom happen to live in a certain area of the globe, might be less predisposed to raise concerns about the privacy implications of their software engineering practices. Thus the claim that the original comment was racist is false in my opinion. Another argument against this claim would be the fact that Asian software engineers (here “Asian” is used in the racial sense) raised in Western countries with a strong culture of privacy, seem to be just as privacy conscious as their Caucasian counterparts.

sho_hn 4y ago

> Add to it that most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy and are super quick to drop any quality standards to meet deadlines. Having lived and worked in South Korea for 4 years, I can't confirm this to be true. My Korean colleages were no less diligent than the ones I now have in Germany, on average. It's true that pressure is high and projects are often run in an air of permanent crisis mode to keep the pressure up, though. If corners get cut the decision usually comes from above. I do systems engineering on operating systems and HMI for consumer electronics. In Korea it was for smart TVs and industrial equipment control, in Germany for cars.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

headsupernova 4y ago

Amazing stuff here folks - this big brained developer just generalized a literal continent of billions of individual people and is the top comment on smart people site hacker news dot com

dang 4y ago
Please don't react to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. It just makes everything worse. Also, while I have you: can you please not use HN primarily for political/ideological arguments? It looks like that's what your account has been doing, and it's not the intended use of the site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

mistrial9 4y ago

dang 4y ago

> most developers from Asia do not really expect or care about privacy and are super quick to drop any quality standards to meet deadlines You started a hellish, tedious flamewar with this. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid here. Please edit general putdowns, casual swipes, and flamebait out of your HN comments, and stick to what you can legitimately say from your own experience. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

twawaaay 4y ago
Hi dang. But this is my 22 years of experience in software development working for various companies from all over the world, including a number of companies in Asia. I have experience working directly for about 30 companies and indirectly for about 50 companies. I worked for a core security team for one of the largest phone makers from Korea. I don't want to name the company but when I say the actual privacy was not a huge concern this is actually my own experience working with them. These are facts just like saying most Americans are overweight. You might not like it, but that does not change the fact. Here, some more explanation about groups of people, facts, prejudice and racism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32480914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32480914
- dang 4y ago
  Unless your 22 years of experience included observations of "most developers from Asia", then your comment went far beyond your experience in a way that was guaranteed to be provocative. It's hardly a borderline call to say that that is flamebait. Flamebait with racial/ethnic/national generalization is just about the biggest provocation there is. It's bog-standard forum moderation to ask users not to do this. Please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]