Akihabara News (Tokyo) — In its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, Japan’s government and big business viewed hardware as the key to the future and was a world leader in the field. However, software engineering is an area where Japan has largely been left behind.
There are various factors which contributed to Japan’s lag in software development.
In a podcast with Akihabara News, Yan Fan, cofounder of the coding bootcamp Code Chrysalis, outlined some of the factors that contributed to the country falling behind in software engineering. She explained that Japanese universities continue to focus on electrical and mechanical engineering departments rather than computer science. Japanese employers have also tended to devalue their own software sections.
Consequently, there are not enough software engineers in Japan, nor sufficiently capable software firms, meaning that the country has tended to depend on foreign expertise.
Fan also highlights the fact that Japanese women have traditionally been steered away from careers in engineering, depriving the country of this pool of talent as well.
One area in which Japan is now witnessing serious impact from such deficiencies is in its development of electric cars.
Experience in China and in other nations has revealed that the development of electric cars in particular is closely linked to advanced software, in the sense that many of the services which contemporary drivers expect are software-based technologies.
This means that Japan, which has long prided itself as a global leader in the automotive industry, is at a serious disadvantage due to its lack of facility with advanced software.
Observers are watching Japanese automakers closely to see what measures they take in an effort to close the software gap.
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