Cultural coding differences [closed]

Question

I've always been wondering if there are differences between the way to code, let's say, in Germany and in India.

Of course, human relationships are completely different and fit the social context. Hierarchy, management, pay amount, working time or religious practices entirely change a lot of things.

But does this affect the way you code ? Did you notice, while traveling or teaming with somebody from abroad, that something in the method or the code has another taste ?

This is not language related, I am French, live in Spain, but we code in English. I assume most of us do.

I tend to feel that American are more straightforward that French in the way they solve problem, but I don't think it can be limited to programming so maybe it's a wrong example.

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WARNING ! Please don't let this question divert to racial abuse.

Answer 1

I work with a number of developers from the Ukraine. Initially I did think there were major cultural differences - such as a propensity to want to use "cute" code using unfathomable template constructions etc.

However, I found the differences flatten out pretty quickly if you communicate well, and right now I'm pretty happy with the code coming from there.

One thing I have noticed is that they tend to place less importance on clean, refactored code as opposed to code that just works. Spelling errors, misplaced letters, bad formatting, I see more of that from the Kiev developers than the local ones. Their generally lower level of English plays a part, but sometimes it's plain sloppiness and it doesn't get fixed - the error just gets copy-pasted everywhere.
Overall though I think developers are developers, and if you cultivate a culture of respect and responsibility you can find good, dependable people everywhere that will fit with your way of working with a little adaptation on your part.

Answer 2

I don't think this kind of thing manifests directly in code, even though people who like to think in clichés (which everyone does to some degree) probably imagine it that way.

But there certainly are indirect effects of culture clashes. I've heard repeatedly that a problem with Indian contractors is that they can't bring themselves to contradict a superior, so if you give them an impossible deadline, they'll deliver a hacked-together best effort of abysmal quality rather than tell you that it simply can't be done in such a short time. Of course, the same result can (and often is) achieved by an over-optimistic "can do" attitude encouraged in many American companies.

Answer 3

Just think of the different ways to label important functions/classes and so on... In my experience all colleagues from other countries did work very different just because of varying priorities in spelling their class-schemes

Answer 4

Something about "Power Distance" comes into play. I first came across this in Malcom Gladwell's Outliers.

Like here in Southeast Asia, we also have the "can't contradict the superior" culture which is ingrained in society. Which, we try to overcome in software development so that we could fit into more agile models.

On the non-programming, we are used to call strangers and older people "Sir" and "Ma'am" which we have to unlearn when dealing with people from Western cultures.