Ask HN: Why does the Eastern Bloc produce so many good programmers? - whitepoplar
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ptsch
As a Russian programmer living in the west, I know of at least one strong
reason:

Harsh climate, forces you to stay more in-door during the winter and autumn.
This naturally pushes people to be more involved with computers. I am sure
anyone who live in the area with strong winters can emphasize.

I disagree with the answers that about good schooling or teachers. Teachers
and professors are strongly underpaid, bribery in universities exists, IT
teachers in pre-university levels frequently can’t even touch type, rely on
outdated curriculum, use old textbooks that break apart. Certainly I learnt
nothing from IT lessons in school except how to do arithmetic on binary and
other things of little practical use (and also boring.)

And about the answer that good grades are emphasized. A-students who dedicate
most of the time to studying can be bullied like in the west. Being socially
outgoing is definitely more valued in school, just like in the west.

You also have to look at the following dynamic: immigration system in the west
creates a situation where if an immigrant is fired from his job, he will lose
his visa. Which is very hard to get in the first place. And obviously western
people don’t _need_ to be to good programmers: all they need to be is to be
good managers, who can exploit the opportunity of getting cheap talent to work
for you.

~~~
a008t
Can confirm - Russian schools and universities, at least before the last
decade, perhaps with very few exceptions, were really awful at teaching
computer science/programming.

Programming, and to some extent maths, were seen as somewhat cool among
certain circles of kids.

I suspect widespread piracy might have also helped - it gave you access to
cheap software (Visual Studio, 3DS Max, Delphi etc.), shoddy pirated copies of
games that you sometimes needed some technical expertise to get to run, made
it easy to play with loads of different software/games/ideas.

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dmitri1981
Having studied in Russia, Germany and UK, I would say that:

\- Technical education was emphasized over humanities. It was much more
important to produce good engineers as required by industry and military
rather than "thinkers".

\- Maths was traditionally well taught across the board, whereas in Europe and
especially UK it is seen as tough and unnecessary.

\- Doing well in school is seen as a point of pride. Thus many work hard to do
well in school to get the respect of their peers.

~~~
memracom
I like that one. Doing well in school is seen as a point of pride. If that
attitude ever takes hold in the USA then you will know that the MAGA movement
has succeeded, utterly.

Will Trump's America be able to overcome the deep seated American cultural
attitude that being stupid is being superior?

~~~
ejanus
This culture is copied 100% by citizens of West Africa where I am from. That
is why our economy is dead and we don't seem to be disturbed. Schools are not
meant to produce anything useful except poorly designed papers after 4-5
years. Hard work is discourage d and serious learning is seen as waste of
time. We produce engineers that are non-functional.

Sometime last two months I started thinking that hash Sun heat and non
availability of public electricity maybe the root cause of our low interest in
learning. It is hot from ten in morning till late mid night . And houses were
not designed with ventilation in mind. And because of scarcity of land in
urban areas people are living in congested communities .

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Keloo
As someone from eastern bloc, it's always about teachers and their passion,
always. It's never about salaries, government motivation, prizes or anything
else. Thank the universe for those few exceptionally teachers that I had.

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gaius
Good... everything really. Every day I thank God that the next generation of
the UK’s workforce is being educated right now in Poland and Romania. If only
we could get their teachers to come here as well as their programmers and
plumbers. But they are probably well aware how bad British school are.

Source: went to “bog standard” state comp. Everything I have accomplished in
my life has been despite my “education”.

~~~
badpun
I've learned very little from my poor math teacher in Poland, and a lot from a
private tutor my parents paid for. Taking private tutors for math was very
common in my (supposedly above average) high school.

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gringoDan
In _Flash Boys_ , Michael Lewis explored why so many of the programmers for
High Frequency Trading firms were Russian.

The conclusion he reached was that in the former USSR, people studying CS only
were allowed about 15 minutes of computer time per week at universities. They
had to write their code by hand and make it as elegant and bug-free as
possible long before actually running it. Learning in this way lent itself to
writing highly efficient code in an industry that rewarded whoever could
execute trades the fastest.

Disclaimer that this is highly anecdotal and I haven't read the book in a
while so I may have some details wrong, but I thought the story was
entertaining.

~~~
zhte415
I remembered the same quote.

Also, in the book, I found the story of how Java came to dominate fields in
finance, covered in the first half of the book, very interesting.

~~~
vram22
>the story of how Java came to dominate fields in finance

Can you briefly summarize the reasons for that (the Java part)?

~~~
zhte415
Sorry, wrong book. Read both in succession.

(Partial) History of Java in finance is covered in Dark Pools by Scott
Patterson.

Reason was from snowball effect starting very small with a lot of altruistic
one finance/tech person helping out another in a different firm. I'm not sure
I'm going to that justice in a short comment, so simply recommend getting the
book.

~~~
vram22
Thanks for the info.

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heavenlyblue
USSR had never put humanities on the pedestal. It would be highly against
ideological questions answered by the government.

If you would like a similar example I would extrapolate for it to be China.
Not necessarily because China is controlled by the communist party, but you
could see how a highly-controlling government would not be interested at all
in people asking questions about the meaning of life. Thus goes the question
of religion, and therefore science being the pinnacle of the world.

Besides, even if you'd really like to teach philosophy in the USSR - you'd
still end up teaching whatever the government tells you to; and thus you'd
never give the required framework for the person to actually be good at it,
since it's one-sided anyway.

I could also see why it's incredibly hard to find brilliant managers coming
from the "Eastern Bloc", as opposed to pure sciences; for the same reasons:
party always makes the choice.

I do come from Lithuania myself and I have a few friends who have later found
good jobs in medicine later on in the UK. Me, though - I was between my IT
hobby since the age of 11 and getting a degree in medicine; and decided to
become a software developer since I believed it would give me more power over
the choices I make later in life. I think I made the right choice.

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dmitrygr
Because getting the best grade on a test doesn't get your ass kicked. This
motivates you to get good grades in the future.

Source: grew up in Russia went to school there and then also in USA. Doing
well on test in USA earns you phyiscal abuse from footballers who were
"counting on the curve". Then the school refuses to investigate because
football is apparently more important. Doing well in Russia earns you
admiration and respect of your classmates.

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a008t
Strong, decentralized maths education. Maths and physics were emphasized, so
there are plenty of free schools specializing on maths and physics, teaching
both at a very high standard. In these schools, the focus is on the best
students and those that can't keep up are allowed to drop out.

The incentive of entering these schools is that entrance exams to the best
tech universities (free) are extremely competitive. And if you don't enter a
tech university, not only are you likely to struggle to find a paying job
afterwards, but if you are not a student you will be conscripted into the
army, which nobody wants.

Maths olympiads are fairly popular, so teachers are encouraged to try to
identify talented students and have them study maths/physics at a higher level
than their peers.

Now, why does the West appear not to produce as many good programmers? Soft
skills seem to be valued more; strong humanities education is traditionally
seen as prestigious/lucrative; culturally, those interested in maths/computers
are seen in a negative light; sports and extroversion are overemphasized;
centralized school-leaving exams perhaps put more focus on rote learning than
deep understanding.

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bencollier49
Historically, as I understand it, there was a strong tradition of hacking (in
the original sense) as well as cracking in order to get all the dodgy Soviet
knock-off computers working with imported software, and so on.

That bled into the demo scene, and I think the tradition continues to a
certain degree, and is concomitant with the educational philosophies mentioned
in other comments.

~~~
a008t
I would say the Eastern Bloc has a culture of hacking even outside of computer
science - DIY with limited resources was very widespread.

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EliRivers
I think I might like a citation on that. I don't live in the Eastern Bloc, so
the only programmers from the Eastern Bloc I meet are those that have left and
are working as programmers elsewhere. I suspect (but cannot prove) that good
programmers would be over-represented in the set of Eastern Bloc programmers
working elsewhere in the world.

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wilsonnb
Unless you've got some data to back that claim up, it's likely that the answer
is "it doesn't, and some kind of bias just makes it appear that way to you".

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zzzcpan
Programming jobs since the 90s were offering a much better pay than pretty
much every other job. So parents were pushing kids to pursue CS degrees. With
completely free or very cheap education this created a lot of competition for
such degrees. And with math exam being the only deciding factor to get
accepted, only people who were really good at math and really well prepared
were getting in. Sort of due to the lack of other opportunities filtering the
most capable and the most motivated.

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zerr
It was/is the way out of poverty. While in the "west" a "humanitarian" can
enjoy a high quality of life, in the east it is associated with poverty.

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corporateslaver
The real answer?

Genetically Russians have a great mix of the creativity seen in Europeans with
the raw logic seen in Asians. Down vote me to hell, it’s the truth

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partycoder
The cultural heroes of the US are not mathematicians, computer scientists or
programmers, but rather billionaires and celebrities.

To put it bluntly, there are more people trying to become Steve Jobs than
Steve Wozniak.

Russia has a rich history of scientific and engineering that is a source of
national pride. They put the first satellite in space, the first man in space,
and they pushed frontiers of science in many regards. They are avid Chess
practitioners and avid readers. Finally, being intellectual is a source of
respect not social shame like in the US.

------
eb0la
I remember that Soviet-era math books were really good.

At least the ones you could get in Spain (translated of course).

Probable not the reason, but a factor.

~~~
vram22
>I remember that Soviet-era math books were really good.

Right. I remember reading some as a school/college student. Ya. Perelman
(author) was a good one, of some math and physics ones. I remember good
discussions of perpetual machines and other popular science topics, well
explained. I think their government subsidized the books for sale in countries
as a form of propaganda. Still, they were good.

