Bet 5
By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect.
Bet 5
Duration 10 years (02002-02012)
Predictor
Esther Dyson
Challenger
Bill Campbell
Stakes $10,000
will go to The Eurasia Foundation (www.eurasia.org) if Dyson wins,
or The Computer History Museum (www.computerhistory.org) if Campbell wins.
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Russia right now is a world leader in unexploited mathematical/logical talent and creativity. My bet is essentially that it will learn to exploit this talent, and that the country will become known for it. Currently, Russia's programmers are beginning to recognize their own capabilities and, being smart and creative, they will no doubt figure out how to organize their marketplace better, putting in place not just software firms but training centers, education loans and the like. I expect them to be recognized as leaders not so much for financial muscle, but as the community to go to when you want creative solutions to tough programming problems. In a world becoming more realtime, optimized and quantified, the Russian talent for algorithms will shine. (Full disclosure: As an investor/advisor to several Russian start-ups, I am trying hard to make this scenario come true!)
My final hope is that these successful and fulfilled Russia programmers will be part of a flourishing civil society, which is why I want my bet to go to the Eurasia Foundation or its successor organization.
As long a there is business opportunity...and I am confident that there will be..... the US will provide world leadership in software development.
By 2012, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times will have referred to Russia as "the world leader in software development" or words to that effect.
My experience with Russian expertise is that there is not the 'hard-boiled' practicality that is associated with US innovation. Russian competency is, however, well-focused by US capitalists if they can properly define a problem at the right level of abstraction. Together, the Americans and the Russians may possibly stay competitive against either the Indians (as in Delhi) and the Chinese (as in mainland), but I wouldn't bet on it
Wasn't it 20 years ago that the same claim was being made for the Japanese?
It is obvious that Russia has potential to positively change and influence the industry of software development, but they cannot become the world leader within the next ten years.
First, the Russian education system cannot offer the same cutting-edge education to its programmers that the current leaders can provide. Young people in the United States and Japan have access to better computers at an earlier age than their Russian counterparts, and these added years of experience are a formidable obstacle for a challenger to surmount. This situation is not permanent but the gap is too wide for the Russians to bridge within ten years.
Second, the internal Russian marketplace is not substantial enough to provide a profit motive that would inspire the necessary legions of young Russian minds to turn to software development. It is far more likely that the Russian software industry will suffer as the truly talented programmers emigrate to to seek their fortunes elsewhere.
Third, Russia is just too far behind in the game to catch up within the given time period. I fully expect to see the Russians marketing valuable software in the next ten years - especially in fields where they have solid track records, such as theoretical physics - but they still will not be world leaders in the software development industry as a whole.
While I agree that Russia has an unexploited wealth of logical, mathematical and algorithmic talent, I am not convinced that the country will manage to exploit this talent to the extent the bet predicts.
Russia has always been a country rich in natural resources and rich in intelligent people, but has rarely managed to superseed the UK and USA in terms of technological advancement. I don't see this situation turning out any differently.
I recently hired a Russian programmer to help with a program I was developing. While he was without doubt hardworking and had good knowledge of coding, other factors must be taken into consideration before a nation can be a world leader.
The Russian education system is strong on fundmentals of math and science but laughably incompetent in the area of what I will refer to as "business logic".
Like a previous poster said, if you carefully define a problem for a Russian, he will solve it. However, Russians do not on their own initiative know what problem to solve.
This is the legacy of Communism where the populace was not taught the spirit of entreprenurialism. In the USA, people actively try to identify problems that need solving in order to make money. Thus we have a superior grasp of the higher level processes and knowledge which leads to economic and technological leadership.
The Russians coders are like assembly line workers. If an American set up the assembly line for them, they will do a superb job assembly what is clearly defined for them. However, they lack the ability to define what products to make and how to design the assembly line.
Real money and real value comes from the higher order knowledge and not from exclusively doing the grunt work.
Having a pool of talented developers is an advantage for Russia but the primary requirement to win this bet is for Russia to have legal and finacial framework, that encourages enterprise. The chance that Russia will achieve this kind of framework any time soon is zero.
I'm a developer working in silicon valley. In my immediate team of thirteen developers, four are Americans and the rest are Europeans or Asians. In the rest of the company the distribution seems to be about the same. It's the economic environment that drive the success of silicon valley.
A more likely outcome is that we will see more Russian developers working in the US.
Bill Gates
Having read the discussions, I am inclined to accept the arguments that Russia will not become the world's leader in software development by 2012.
However, that is not the bet. The issue as I understand is about reporting. Will both of two daily print media refer to Russia as the leader in software development?
I would argue that if one of the two makes this report, so will the other. I would argue that if one major news or wire service makes this report, one and therefore both of the print media will repeat it. The question is, will one major news or wire service feed the statement in question to the major print media within the time frame of the bet.
I believe they will.
Well, I doubt it too, but I dissagree with many arguments here. What is 'higher order knowledge' you speak about? Isn't it the mathematics and logics (as opposed to mere code writting) that is relevant, and there the Russian education system is much better (and not only Russian) in that respect compared to the US. As for the lagging behind in terms of hardvare, that is hardly an issue, with computer prices going exponentialy down and everyone in Russia able to afford one. And that is the only investment you need to make there - pirat software is so cheap and easily acessible there that it is quite an advantage compared to US (where people actually PAY MONEY for software packages). Also, with abundant misery all around them and good money that is in programming, Russians (and other much poorer countries, like India) are far more motivated to do it. I don't believe that there is a talent issue, it is just that their educational system is better in fundamental science (at pre-university level, so much more people do get solid education).
USA however does not need to worry. It imports as many programmers as it needs (Russians included). BTW, your comments about 'superior grasp' are quite amusing. I thought it was the system, not the people who were making the difference, and be sure, Russians are as much greed driven as any member of 'technological leadership' with 'superior grasp of the higher level processes and knowledge'. It is nice to be a superior CEO well above the dirty grunt math and theory (or intelligence of any kind), those engineers are after all inferior species who are to be put in cubicles and whose blood is to be sucked, those low order knowledge slobs.
As for the Russian (ex-Soviet or Eurasian) leadership, it does exist today. But it is more in the realm of white slave trade.
I can imagine Russia being described as " a " leader, but not " the leader ".
I went to Russia in the early 90´s with exactly this idea in mind. Russia is / was full of bright engineers and mathematicians, and with pay rates at $ 200 a month at the time, surely a great business could be built. I´m willing to agree that it was my own mangement failures that meant we did not succeed...but I think there is a larger underlying problem as well.
We did get contract work with Interplay, Bullfrog and others in the games market, and also delivered some interesting work on pattern recognition and other more mathematical areas. And we delivered good code, bug ( almost ) free on time.
One could also point to work done ( not by us ) for Sun on multprocessing by Professor Banbayan´s team, or the natural language recognition work by Naranyani, or the various people working on digital coding.
So far so good for Esther´s side of the bet.
Against it I would put the problems that we faced. If we defined the task very tightly (" Here is the source code to Another World. Make it work in Windows." ) we got great results at very reasonable prices. If the brief was " These guys make good games. Here´s a budget, make a game for us " we never got anywhere.
Perhaps another way of putting it is that good software development is very little to do with coding. It´s more about the management of the developers, and the spotting of the opportunity to which the efforts should be directed.
Those last two are in very short supply.
There have been a number of attempts to compete with India for business software development, but the basic understanding of how businesses work still seems to be lacking. Code´s great, just not the thought behind the processes being coded.
Again, perhaps it´s my management skills, but if the business side of Russian coding was up to speed, we would have beaten Google to the automatic news search engine by three years.
Tim Worstall
It will neither be USA nor Russia; surprise third nation will be the World leader in this field!
I have to agree. Between native software development in India and the rapid outsourcing to there by Western companies, I'd have no trouble believing that India could be the software capital of the world by 2012.
Certainly, I'd put India's chances ahead of Russia's.
Does sarcasm count?
Wall Street Journal? New York Times? Probably, one of them will indeed publish such an article in time, citing Russia as the world leader in software development (even if Ms. Dyson has to write the article herself!) Having recently visited Moscow for the first time, and seen firsthand that tremendous pool of talent cited in the bet, I have to agree with the potential for Russia to rival the US (and, more significantly, India) in software development. So, I agree with the *spirit* of the prediction. As for what the press publishes -- well, that's really irrelevant, and I wish there were a more objective way to measure software leadership.
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