Quality software from China?

[MrPlacid]

Every time we think of chinese goods, we think of inferior products. But what do you guys think of softwares coded from China and India? I am interested because software doesn't require any tangible raw materials, so it can't be made with inferior materials. So do you think China and India's software is on par with their western counterpart or not?

[ThunderSqueak]

This depends on the UI mostly, and the user manual and help files.  Nothing is more annoying than trying to find help only to see half ass translated documentation and UI...    Same goes for help centers for various products out there.  The number 1 complaint I hear from my clients about <insert company here> is when they call the help line and get someone in India or another country and they do not speak English or that they do and their accent is so thick you cannot understand them. 

Language barriers are a pita.

[johnboxall]

Whatever you do, ensure there are rigid payment milestones. That is, when the team has completed something to *your* standard, then they get paid.

[MrPlacid]

ThunderSqueak, thanks for reminding me about poorly coded user interface. I almost forgot about that.

Anyways, I am just wandering because programming and engineering jobs are moving overseas quite rapidly. The other day, I saw on youtube a small philippines company showcasing their point of sale software for business.  I thought it sucks, but maybe the local businesses there might like it.

[penghan]

Yes ,of course!

[charliex]

Just like anywhere it varies considerably. However its still relatively new and the trade laws just aren't there, commonly companies just are a couple of people that farm it out to any programmer that will take it on, they'll do a bad job, disappear and startup again over night. and there's nothing you can do about it, you won't even know who is actualyl doing the work most of the time

the language barrier can be a problem, just look up the chris pirillo web 2.0 video ( ), oddly that same company called me yesterday, they call constantly once they get your number.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I wouldn't dream of outsourcing software to China. Look at the user interface on pretty much any Chinese product and it's typically a mess with little thought given to useability and ergonomics - clearly thrown together up to the 'just about useable' state and then frozen forever.

Software can rarely be so precisely specified that it can be written exactly to the spec - there is always the need to take 'common-sense' decisions to deal with things not explicitly mentioned, and this is where communication,language and cultural differences can be a major impediment to ending up with reliable, useable software.

In the time it would take to write a suffucently detailed spec you could probably write teh code yourself!

For any softwtare that will need long-term maintainance, you also need to consider how language issues will affect the quality of the code documentation.

I once had the misfortune to see the source code for a product which a customer of mine had outsourced to Singapore - It was a complete mess  -no discernable structure, no comments, unpronouncable variable names - entirely unmaintainable.

[david77]

The only piece of software from China that I know of and that I have to use regularly is the software
my el cheapo Top Programmer came with. The programmer itself is quite marvelous. I got it off ebay for
about 100 EUR directly from Hongkong.  It is very versatile, programms nearly everything and has a testmode for
TTL and CMOS. But the user interface is just dreadful. First of all it is a gamble to get the software working.
I have one PC where it works. All my PC's use Win2k, but it works only on one of them.
The translation is rough - at best.
There is no help at all and the website is also not very helpfull http://www.ty51.com/.
Well, thats what you get for being a tight-fisted b*****d 

David

[alm]

The Chinese software I've seen (eg. from Rigol and Zeroplus) is pretty bad in the UI department, and support usually isn't great either. But this is software that was completely designed and developed in China.

[Mechatrommer]

guess who are designing and programming Windows... mostly?
from my eyes, programming is similar to EE in aspect that they both needs experience, passion, testing, and.... knowledge.

[TheDirty]

My company has a development team in India which I work with.  At first they were terrible, but after a while now, they are quite decent and I'm sure well worth whatever money the company is paying them.  Our company has done a good amount to get them up and running and we constantly have people back and forth training and updating.

[Zero999]

Chinese software?

Most of it is probably pirated.

Anyone heard of Green Dam Youth Escort?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dam_Youth_Escort

[Zad]

No idea about China, but India... Sigh.

They are amazingly good at twisting statistics to say what they want them to mean. The prime example of this is call centres. They seem to get through many more calls than local call centres, and with a great success rate. The trouble is, the customer actually comes away without their problem solved and either has to make more calls, or gives up completely. So the call was completely useless and, whilst the stats show it as successful, it was just a waste of money.

It isn't just a language divide but a cultural one too. Which is irrelevant for the actual abstract code, but 99% of programming isn't the actual code, but the [-]design[/-] of the software. In my experience, most of the code written in India is hacked together at best, and horrendous to maintain. Don't forget, these outsourcing companies are out to extract as much money as possible for as little work as possible from the cheapest workers.

[charliex]

There are some brilliant programmers in china, india etc just like anywhere but typically they work for large corporations that have big presences. You get the odd one that hasn't been discovered or got the means to get in somewhere and they end up with one of the slave labour outsourcing places, who'll take anyone who can write HTML or some web script language and say they're a programmer

Its more that there are a lot of man in the middle companies that are just taking advantage of the situation, they over promise and under deliver, but then disappear. Whereas elsewhere, most people over promise and under deliver too, but its easier to make them accountable for it. 

But on the other hand you're also looking at greedy/stupid people who're looking for a way to cut costs, and don't do the due diligence for these outsourcing gigs and get their asses handed to them. Then theres the whole we can't possibly compete with this stuff or give it at the prices its been sold for, so its a vicious circle. Generally people seem happy to accept sub par work if its only a bit cheaper.

We outsource to russia pretty sucessfully.

[saturation]

Software has many forms, which is it: firmware, drivers, subroutines, or whole applications?  I think the language barrier makes for a substantial reason Chinese written software is less visible in the Americas or Europe, compare to competition from Eastern Europe and India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_industry_in_China

Every time we think of chinese goods, we think of inferior products. But what do you guys think of softwares coded from China and India? I am interested because software doesn't require any tangible raw materials, so it can't be made with inferior materials. So do you think China and India's software is on par with their western counterpart or not?

[MrPlacid]

I hear alot of big software giants are using oversea programmers, and they seemed to be very successful.

For those of you who use oversea, does it scare you sometimes that some individual has a copy of your software source code? If it's driver codes, who cares right?, but what about a full fledge software?

Here in the US we can sue improper code handling like what happen with facebook,
"[The movie The Social Network] covers [Zuckerberg's] dispute with the Winklevoss twins, who alleged he stole code when they employed him to develop their site, ConnectU. Facebook paid them $65m to go away."

I guess it all boils down to trust.

[saturation]

Alas, it doesn't work very well.  What it really boils down to is contract law and to sue the contractor for damages if it were violated.  To avoid getting your intellectual property stolen, fan out the work so contractors only have pieces of the puzzle, then you assemble it when you receive the code subroutines.  While contract law gives you redress in the developed world, it won't be easy or cheap, and the contractee will be screwed in the meantime as many already are in various industries, in places where they respect it little like PRC and Eastern Europe.

I hear alot of big software giants are using oversea programmers, and they seemed to be very successful.

For those of you who use oversea, does it scare you sometimes that some individual has a copy of your software source code? If it's driver codes, who cares right?, but what about a full fledge software?

Here in the US we can sue improper code handling like what happen with facebook,
"[The movie The Social Network] covers [Zuckerberg's] dispute with the Winklevoss twins, who alleged he stole code when they employed him to develop their site, ConnectU. Facebook paid them $65m to go away."

I guess it all boils down to trust.