[OT] Re: D User Survey

[Chris]

On Sunday, 10 December 2017 at 13:06:34 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
>
> Well, the wikipedia entry for Great Britain takes the clear 
> stance that it's the island that's Great Britain, and that when 
> Great Britain is referred to politically, it's the 3 countries 
> on the island and does not include any part of Ireland. It also 
> lists the full name of the UK as being the United Kingdom of 
> Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_britain 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
>
> So, technically, Ireland is not part of Great Britain at all, 
> but sometimes, folks do end up including Northern Ireland in 
> what they mean when they use the term - and plenty of folks 
> outside of the UK probably get it wrong all the time.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

There are two political entities in Ireland, the Republic of 
Ireland (which is a member of the European Union) and Northern 
Ireland (which, being part of the UK, will leave the EU after 
Brexit). Thus, to use only "Ireland" would be wrong (it has to be 
Republic of Ireland), but how the ROI could be left out is a 
mystery to me.

Anyway, I know that people in the Americas (including Latin 
America) are usually faster to pick up on things like Facebook, 
Twitter, WhatsApp etc. But these are backend technologies, if you 
wish. It seems to me that at the moment companies and programmers 
in the USA are much more reluctant to adopt or explore new paths 
as regards the front end (the programming language in this case). 
I don't think it is to do with political / social conservatism, 
as this didn't stop engineers in the US to explore new 
technologies in the past either, and the Nazis were big into 
technology too. There is not necessarily a link between political 
/ social conservatism and lack of technological progress (there 
can be).

Maybe it is a certain laziness / complacency, since the USA no 
longer feel the pressure of having to be "the best" as they did 
during the cold war. Maybe this sort of complacency also has to 
do with the fact the for decades the US would make sure that 
their allies would only buy their technologies, so there was no 
real competition, no real challenge there (which partly explains 
the success of Microsoft). But now with China and other big 
players having entered the pitch, there is more pressure again, 
and if anything, a more "conservative"* approach that tries to 
relocate companies within the national borders might actually 
give innovation a boost.

*It's not so much being "conservative" as an understandable 
reaction to globalization gone out of hand.