Ukraine Holds 4th Largest Programmer Population

andrewuoft points out this BusinessWeek article on the budding technology sector of Ukraine; the article points out that Ukraine has -- "after the U.S., India, and Russia -- the fourth largest number of computer programmers in the world" and that "Even today, scientific institutes each year churn out some 50,000 science or technology graduates. Not surprisingly, Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."

Comments

Globalization

[FiReaNGeL]

With the economical globalization these days, the trend (strategy?) for some countries seem to overspecialize in one specific area (in this case, IT) to outperform competition on a worldwide scale. Risky for sure, but it seems to work right now (at least for India, who reap the profits of investing massively in IT).

more to it

[Quixote]

There's more to becoming a global player than just the number of programmers. The infrastructure is important: not only the physical infrastructure like roads, trains and powerlines, but also the governmental infrastructure (like courts, government offices, etc.). Plus, a stable government (not a one-man show like in many other places) is necessary: money flees uncertainty.

It is unfortunate, but Ukraine has gained notoriety for being the base of a lot of the "east european bride" scammers. Plus, the general perceived lawlessness of the fUSSR republics is not conducive to investment. Face it: post communism, there were a lot of problems with foreign partners of Russian businessmen being bumped off and strong-armed.

Things may be different now, but a good reputation takes time to develop.

As far as India is concerned: there are many Indians in high places in tech companies in the US, and the natual tendency is for them to favor India (a known commodity, to them) for outsourcing their operations.

I'm shocked, so shocked.

[loraksus]

Not surprisingly, Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."

Because of the massive amounts of corruption at all levels of government? Organized crime bosses who refuse to let companies set up shop without bribes?

Ukrainian programmers

[slavik1337]

the next Doom3/HL2/Far Cry killer that THQ will publish next year, STALKER: SHadow of Chernobyl is developed by a Ukrainian company called GSC gameworld. They also developed Firestarter if you played it :)

Ukranian guy won a software competition

[AndreyFilippov]

Last winter I've got an idea of trying a software competition to develop a video streamer for the network cameras developed by Elphel (both software and hardware are GPL'ed). I decided to try Russian software developers (I'm Russian myself) so I wrote an article in a Russian online magazine "Computerra" and offered a $3000 prize for the best streamer to use with the camera (the code was to retain author's copyright and be released under GNU/GPL). I did not expect many participants and thought I'l sacrifice 3 cameras. But it turned different and I've sent out 9 of them - 4 to Russia, 3 - to Ukraine, 1 - to Germany and 1 to India (the article was in Russian - that restricted participants to Russian-reading).

Of those 9 participants 6 reached the finish line and the winner is Ukrainian Alexander Melichenko. What amazed me was that I've got the first version of his steamer in just a couple weeks after the announcement _before_ he received the hardware! Hi used my online camera to download his application over the Internet and made it working. And the camera uses Axis ETRAX100LX CPU - something he never programmed before.

All that software is now on our Sourceforge project page - https://sourceforge.net/projects/elphel.

Re:I rolled 6 sixes!

[Ohreally_factor]

Speaking as a fellow Californian, you're full of shit. California was never "emptied" of Mexicans. Hispanic people have lived continuously in California since the days when the missions were founded.

What's funny is that most of the anti-immigration people are probably descendants of the Oakies, the refugees from the dust bowl. I guess being poor white trash isn't so bad when you have someone you can treat like a nigger.