Why the Soviet Computer Failed
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as a concise answer to why Soviet computing failed, including reliance on reverse engineering and bureaucracy.
What it is
An Asianometry explainer on why the Soviet Union, once a leading computing power, fell far behind the US in computers by the 1980s. It traces the gap from the 1960s onward despite strong state support for science.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2022 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends nayuki · 2024-07 · on “Every company should be owned by its employees”
> The Soviet Union couldn't compete on the development of computers, because the USSR was trying to optimize towards what could computers be used for then and there. There was a great video on this: [this video] Asianometry - "Why the Soviet Computer Failed" (18m56s) [2022-07-07]
Cites adolph · 2022-10 · on “The Soviet Union’s Nuclear Icebreakers”
Asianometry also has a video "Why the Soviet Computer Failed" [0]. If the Soviet Union had excellent higher education, why was/is Communism and then corruption/organized crime an issue? At what point do phds, engineers, etc take responsibility for the society in which they live? When do the smart people say "we have met the enemy and he is us?" [1] 0. [this video] 1. [LINK] From the video description: In 1986, the Soviet Union had slightly more than 10,000 computers. The Americans had 1.3 million. At the time of Stalin's death, the Soviet Union was the world's third most proficient computing power. But by the 1960s, the US-Soviet computing gap was already years long. Twenty years later, the gap w
Cites x-complexity · 2024-01 · on “Ant Completes Process of Removing Jack Ma's Control”
> > moving back towards an inefficient state controlled economy > Didn't the Soviets go from agrarian to superpower and give the US a merry chase before collapsing? This might be a long arc. The source for their leap "from agrarian to superpower" came from the satellite states that they had in control, and their usage of 5 year plans to accelerate growth of their heavy industries, at the sacrifice of growth in consumer-oriented industries. Nationally, the USSR was able to catch up quickly to the US after WWII, and likewise pull off some punches to publicly show their superiority in certain fields: - Internal political resistance to the transistor & computer tech in general made them laggards