India Does It Better

The belief that since India, at some time, has CMM Level 5 companies, while no other country has, so every company in India is perfect at software development.

The truth is that they are cheaper, because they pay very small salaries when accounted in dollars. You could say that Brazil Does It Even Better, because we can do it cheaper here. However, even if you couldn't understand, Indian programmer's speak english, what makes communication easier.

Yes and no. Indian programmers speak mostly British English, and without a host of AmericanCulturalAssumptions, which hampers communication with Americans greatly. It ain't good if they produce a well-designed, efficent product that does something other than the specification

Well it's a form of British English. I think it is a cultural assumption that British English is homogenous. Try getting somebody from Glasgow, Belfast, Newcastle, Liverpool and London in the same room and see how long it takes them to communicate.

Oh, I'm not assuming it's homogeneous, just that it's not American

Producing a well-designed, efficient product that does something other than the specification is the output of a great deal of development effort. It is treated as an axiom in many shops - therefore, the conclusion follows, they may as well get it from the cheapest place.

All throughout economic history work has gone where the labour is cheapest. Why should development be any different?

There are well-defined, accurate quality metrics for manufacturing, so that the quality of (say) cars made in (say) Mexico can match the quality of those made in (say) USA. Software development does not yet have equivalent metrics or good ways to measure them, nor a solid handle on process improvement to fix them.

I think that's only true for software development in general. I think there are software development jobs which are amenable to this level of measurement, and organistions with high levels of the CMM fit well with those kind of projects, and those kind of projects can be done at a distance with that kind of project and organisation. For those kind of projects, maybe it is true that IndiaDoesItBetter

So, what you're saying is "India does it better, for sufficiently limited definitions of better"?

Yes. Limited, but valuable, definitions of better, which are quite wide enough to build a successful software industry on

Certainly, but that's akin to claiming that "Mexico does it better" when you mean only that Mexico has the cheap labor and industrial means to build Volkswagens. True, but trivially so.

No, it's not trivial. Knowing your comparative advantages is a good thing

Likewise, India does indeed have a thriving software industry, but that does not equate to an automatic success at other forms of software development.

Indeed. That was the point I was making (not being the original author of this page)

Isn't the only metric that matters that the software does what the client wants it to do? And it cost what the client wanted it to do and it was delivered when the client expected it. And the quality was what the client expected. Apart from that, yes. :-)

[To the tune of the James Bond theme, "Nobody Does it Better"...]

India does it better makes me feel sad for the rest India does it twice as good as you baby, they're the best.

In the UK, there's an Indian comedy show on TV called "Goodness Gracious Me". One of the characters is an old Indian gent who staunchly believes that "everything was invented in India!" (and that every prominent person is Indian.) I laughed until it hurt when they did a sketch about when Mr.Everything-was-Invented-in-India's son comes home to admit that he's converted to christianity. His father's face lights up. Jesus - he's INDIAN. For the next few minutes we get a list of reasons why Jesus is Indian (based on things that Jesus did in the Bible...) Seriously, though they have come up with a few useful things... like the number system.

Aren't our decimal numbers Arabic? And positional notation Babylonian?

But zero is Indian (I think) American Indian Doesn't seem to be, from the below.

Zero may have been inspired from Greek. Though it seems the Arabic decimals were Indian in origin.

The concept of Zero comes from this sloka (verse) in the Upanishads,

Purnamadah Purnamidam Purnat Purnamudacyate Purnasya Purnamadaya Purnameva Avasisyate

which translates to:

This is zero (purnam - round, complete, no beginning, no end, or the number zero), that is zero All comes from zero When you subtract zero from zero, what is left is zero

The Upanishads were compiled over the ages, no later than 3000 BC

Arabic numerals were actually Indian numericals. They were discovered by Arabian traders who travelled to India. As early as 1000 B.C, there were proofs of numerical value of Zero (Shunya) being used in various ways.

Which were certainly forgeries since as late as 500 CE, people still used different symbols (or none) for 'positional blank'. The most common date given for its invention is around 650 CE.

If you write all your zeroes as #, does that mean they're not zeroes?

No. But if you write zeros variously as ', , and ', and sometimes leave them out altogether, and you have no concept that 1 - 1 = 0, or that 1 * 0 = 0 then the placeholders you use are not zeros.

A simple mnemonic: Arabic numerals are Indian; India ink is Chinese.

Try The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics by George Gheverghese Joseph for zero and infinities in Indian mathematics (ISBN 0-691-00659-8 ).

Part of this notion comes from the great sales job done by Indian universities and offshoring facilitators. They spin catchy tales of a Samuri-like IT graduates that a PointyHairedBoss laps up like they do all other sales snow jobs. I remember one website bragging that IIT graduates can compile their programs without a computer. (It may be true, but of marginal practicality.)

Don't get me wrong, India has a huge population which provides a bigger pool in which to select top talent from, and thus has many highly talented people. However, they often lack business-savvy because their background is too theoretical and because most are new to the work world and lack practical experience.

Japanese companies were known to also spin catchy tales in the 1980's. Japanese programmers are still considered some of the highest quality programmers with regard to defect counts. However, they are now too expensive. Plus, the language barrier with the west is larger than it is in India.

Another source of such notions comes from pro-business lobbyists, such as ITAA, who often try to justify visa labor and offshoring by claiming Americans are poorly educated. Whether this is true or not, ITAA is not known for its detailed studies and specifics.

IT services business is maturing in India

see http://www.forbes.com/business/2004/12/13/1213mckinseyindia.html

The InternationalOutsourcing market is changing with American companies bidding against Indian firms for talent. Comparative shopping for services also is driving down margins.

See DevNull, BrainsAsaCheapCommodity