Paul Graham (who is about 4 years older than I am (eek)) and I apparently remember the 1980s and 90s very differently. At the time, Japan was going to eat our

Paul Graham (who is about 4 years older than I am (eek)) and I apparently remember the 1980s and 90s very differently. At the time, Japan was going to eat our lunch while it simultaneously kicked our butts. Its government-academic-industrial complex was how to do things. It was the technological and industrial leader, the one everyone was chasing. (This was possibly entirely due to the automotive industry, but.... And consumer electronics had something to do with it.) Then the wheels started to come off. In the software world, the Fifth Generation project came up with...a PROLOG machine. At the same time that Lisp machine companies were going belly up all over the US. And then Japan disappeared entirely. From what I saw and heard, the Japanese software industry became very insular and remote from the rest of the world. And then, the lost decades. The process described in the article does a better job (and a more relatable one) at explaining what I saw than "they were Japanese", I think. But then, I don't know what the last 20 years have been like, since I haven't needed to follow the Japanese software industry. (Well, there was Ruby, but that was a pretty big mistake.)