An interesting story about a coder in Accra, Ghana:
<< Besides being compact, his programs also write frequently to disk, reducing the chances of losing data if power is lost, as it often is. Because Internet connectivity remains relatively expensive, his programs also work offline as much as possible. And to combat the rampant piracy, beta versions of software rarely leave Soft’s premises, finished products don’t have an autoinstall function (you need a Soft technician to launch them), and batches of bug fixes are often delivered individually to customers rather than generally released. (…)
Software vendors doing business in Africa constantly battle technological ignorance. (…) >>
This is SO true…not only on the African Continent…
<< Ghana’s* educational system is exceedingly theoretical and designed to train people to manage, say, a Mercedes dealership rather than to build a Mercedes," Chinery-Hesse says. "What we require is more practical education. >>
* = Ghana, Germany, … you name it, same problems everywhere. Imagine I had to learn FORTRAN for my studies in civil engineering. Why? Because it is a) simple, b) shows the structure behind coding and most importantly c) the prof only knows Fortran as a programming language. C++? Visual Basic? No chance!
[found via: cyrusfarivar.com]