From: william@acci.com.au (William Lo)
Subject: Re: Electronics/videogame stores in Hong Kong. (SUMMARY)
Keywords: HongKong has little exciting software engineering stuff...
Organization: IBM Australia/Australian Computing and Communications Institute
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 02:56:44 GMT

In article <84636@netnews.upenn.edu>, taoc@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Chi-Chih Tao) writes:
|> 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.  


	** Ha ha, I'm sorry, but you were in the wrong place, mate!
	   Why bothered mucking around?  I could've told you highend things
	   aren't shopped from lowend shops.  Next time when you're home,
	   grab a copy of the yellow pages looking for the right place you
	   guys should be heading to, easy, what you see is what you get.
	   I'm sure you can find everything you want this way(good eh?)


|> 
|> 	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?"


	** Nah, you know.  You need a Mac(hey, 486s ain't bad things
	   things at all, don't you mislead our readers here ok?).  But not 
	   now perhaps.  Wait for the MacClones guys.


|> 
|>         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.
                ^^^^^^^^^

	** Chinese applications(I'm saying the usable ones) are actually
	   no easy things, mate!  Coz they are ... always always ... not easy
	   to use(well, some were ... and are ...  hard to setup, too!) So I
	   can understand why they are "very very hi tech" in people's eyes
	   (well honestly in mine too!) - simply because using them presumes
	   Higher-than-normal Techniques, you believe it or not.  Question:
	   -                  -
	   how to get a chinese-based DBMS working - just curious? 
	   

|> 
|> 	(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!)


	** Correct, mate!  So watch out when buying machine if you're concerned	           about your baby's performance.  Like bandwidth, cache, m/b design
	   and so on, they all count.  But you don't really need to know too
           much on bloody stuff like these, so don't cry!
 
 
|> 
|> 	May be they should look at what a SunSPARC, IBM RISC 6000 and a Silicon
|> 	Graphics can do!


         ** Aha, agree, oops, hang on ... so you think our mates should've all
            got Suns(or something) at home?  But I guess they're just too HOT
	    now you know - well, is it still SUMMER upthere?  I'd say people
	    are desperately dying for an air-con right now instead!  So, 
	    dunno, but really I'm not putting it on.


|> 
|> >	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 ???


	** That's right.


|> >
|> >	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.


	** Yep!  Why don't we even have more pirate BBS's?  What a waste!
	   Our homemates are just incredibly too "Creative" you know!  
	   Good point here!  You know what I'm saying, hope you do.
	   
|> 
|> 	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.
	    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


	** Well, a uni degree would simply and merely suggest that you've
           formally done something related to a particular academic area(not
 	   necessarily a job).  How much you deserve to get(in $) you don't
	   quite know coz it doesn't depend on how much effort you've done.
	   I dunno, but high-pay jobs aren't always the hardest.  It isn't
   	   always fair you know...
	

|> 	Too bad, but that's the rule of games in HK.
|>



	**  Great discussions mate!  Good stuff, good fun, expecting more!!
	    

---
Cheers,
Bill Lo


Xref: sparky soc.culture.hongkong:9242 soc.culture.asian.american:7142