From: taoc@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Chi-Chih Tao)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.hongkong
Subject: Re: Electronics/videogame stores in Hong Kong. (SUMMARY)
Keywords: HongKong has little exciting software engineering stuff...
Date: 28 Jul 92 18:04:40 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <1992Jul25.002241.41114@enlil.premenos.sf.ca.us> cho@enlil.premenos.sf.ca.us (Cho-Ming Tai) writes:
>
>	sold at Golden Plaza (in Kowloon) disappointing.
>	They were all PC stuff.  It's hard even to find any high-end Macs,
>	not mentioning Sun, Next, DEC stuff.  

	That's also what I think.  To me, Hong Kongers are IBM-PC die-hards.
	Many of my friends are engineers from TI, and they joke "Who need Mac?"

        I think the most stupid of all is the excessive hype about Chinese 
        System software and i386/i486.  They think Chinese software are very
        very high-tech (ACK!) and i486 is the fastest son of a gun on earth.

	(If you see people who used to judge a computer's powerfulness by
	 the clock rate, like 25MHz, 30MHz, etc., you can tell these people
	 - who are everywhere in HK - don't know shit about modern computer
	 architecture!)

	May be they should look at what a SunSPARC, IBM RISC 6000 and a Silicon
	Graphics can do!

>	That's why only a handful prestiged U student can access UNIX
>	usenet.  And the general Hong Kong (probably including CS) students
>	are only at a barely-above user level.  *** No flame, please ***

	I would rather use PRIVILEDGED instead of PRESTIGED to describe these
	students.

>	Most programming jobs in Hong Kong are for Application Programmers
>	who code around RDBMS packages (mostly Oracle on PC or Mainframe;
>	Sybase was not there yet) to implement BUSINESS computer software
>	systems.  A brother of my old classmate got a MSCS (specializing
>	in AI) from U.K. can only find a mainframe banking programming job
>	in Hong Kong.  I wonder if there is ANY SOFTWARE COMPANY in
>	Hong Kong, besides financial institutions, that employs programmers.
>
>	I think Hong Kong is slow and reluctant to catch up with others in
>	Hi-Tech areas.  The government does not put enough money in
>	encouraging industrial R&D, post-graduate research, etc.
>
>	If this trend continues, Hong Kong will be full of BUSINESS people
>	while Japan, Taiwan and Singapore dominate the ASIAN HI-TECH AREA.
>	Well, I think it's OK for a country to specialize; however, isn't
>	it better for Hong Kong to diversify its interests and growth
>	opportunities ???
>
>	Cho-ming Tai (cho@premenos.sf.ca.us),
>	Premenos Corp.

	Well, HK people are very short-sighted.  Most of them do not care about
	the long-term benefits and only strive for short-term profits.  That's
	why there is no software firm in Hong Kong.  Why bother to make one?
	You can just go to Sham Shui Po and get a pirate copy of your favourite
	software at a cost so low that you think you're in heaven.  These
	software are great and cheap, so making one on your own is stupid.

	And of course, let me remind you a golden rule of software engineering.
	If you are formally trained in CS and want to make big money, do not
	even think about opening a software company because software engineer
	do not make big money!  If your software is bad, no one will buy.  If
	your software is good, a few will buy it and then copy it all over 
	the places.  (The stupid and useless copyright laws in HK just
	encourage people doing that)

	Thus, all remaining CS opportunities are just stupid and 
	straight-forward COBOL and SQL programming, which even a stupid 
	high-schooler may excel in 2 weeks.  So even you get an univ. degree,
	you don't deserve high pay in these jobs.
	
	Too bad, but that's the rule of games in HK.
From: plaw@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Paul Law)
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 00:49:01 GMT
Subject: Re: video games from Hong Kong
Organization: the HP Corporate notes server