Ask HN: Do Americans write better software than the rest of the world?
For instance, Microsoft Guidance (written by two people) is a framework for working with large language models and upon my first try, it worked really well. I was able to generate controlled sequences of tokens using Guidance, no problem other than my linter yelling at me for some minor issue.
But there's an equivalent software written by folks at ETH Zurich. It's called LMQL (https://lmql.ai/). I actually like its syntax more than Guidance's, and I appreciate their good documentation and tooling support. But... LMQL just doesn't work on my machine even though I have set up the env variable for OpenAI API key. It's a nice research project with interesting ideas, but it seems to be lacking when it comes to good programming.
I wonder if it's a pattern. Do Americans (or more generally, programmers in the states) write better software because they're more closely in touch with the tech industry?
38 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 78.3 ms ] threadThat is an awfully heavy accusation for someone who hasn't even gotten their software running.
I don't know the answer to that. I don't use the software. I think a lot of people are right to call your hypothesis out as hyperbole though, this entire post reads like a pointed complaint at German researchers for not outperforming Microsoft.
I don't think it's fair to accuse me of such things. The post is a "question" not a "proof". If you have evidence that points to the contrary of what I said, I'd be happy to read it.
In my opinion, that tends to create far more organic growth of ideas.
Aside from that, how did you come the to the conclusion that the second project is 'lacking when it comes to good programming'? Just because you didn't get it running?
I'm currently working on a culture shift for some of these people and it's really hit and miss. Some of the people feel very uncomfortable doing things "the western way" and other love it and say so.
But you could just as easily get into an organization with a similar experience as ETH Zurich within the US, I would say that is far more common
In all seriousness this isn’t something you can compare - so many more important factors
Are Americans more closely in touch with the tech industry? I don't know what this is based on, but I'd like to see the metric compared to other countries, such as Japan.
I can't tell, because the grammar is sufficiently vague, if your claim is that American software is better, or that Americans are more in touch with the tech industry, but it surely seems like one or the other.
Based on your process, I would now like to claim this as anecdotal evidence that people whose experience of programming, in years, is a non-prime number are bad at arguing on internet forums.
The pattern I've noticed is that all software in the US failed after Bell collapsed and the collective unconscious moved software innovation to Europe.
And of course, this happens in large numbers. The bigger the market, the bigger the software industry. But even Germany isn't even a third of the US market for software.
The actual people aren't different. You just can't achieve in the EU what is possible in the US, and I don't mean "become a millionnaire", I mean "provide for yourself and maybe a family". Especially since the US has places to live that are far cheaper than the cheapest place to live in many EU countries like the Netherlands, or the kind-of-EU Switzerland.
I am sorry to hear that you have issues installing LMQL. We are working very hard on LMQL, to make it as seamless and accessible as possible (as you have seen with our docs). However, we are of course not a well-funded company and the project is open source and community-driven.
Please feel free to reach out (hello@lmql.ai or Discord), so we can assist you in getting started. Please also consider contributing to the project, to improve it with respect to the kind of issues you were experiencing.