TED
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2011–2017
20:36 · 2.2M views · Jan 14, 2007
In this TED talk, Hans Rosling uses animated statistics to debunk myths about the developing world, showing how health and income have improved across countries.
Cited as the classic data-driven argument that the first-world versus third-world split is outdated and the world is improving.
4 comments from Hacker News
The First/Third World East/West split isn't as concrete or relevant as it used to be, perhaps best explained by Hans Rosling: this video The first proper comment in TFA hits the nail on the head for India, and is relevant elsewhere. If you approach programmers in a non-Anglospheric country adopting the cultural and business manners and expectations of the Anglosphere then your project is doomed from the get go. This is doubly true for countries like India that technically are too big and diverse to form part of the Anglosphere but have a massive number of English speakers, often as a second language. I don't perceive programmers from any nation in any particular way, because there are good programmers, there are crap programmers and there are culturally different programmers. What I will say is that for programmers who have English as a second or third language or not at all it's much harder for them to work as most of the tutorials, books, online resources are written primarily in English for an English speaking populous. Even the languages themselves are written in English following English idioms. How would you feel about programming in a language that uses Mandarin or Hindi as a base language?
These charts just don't feel right without Hans Rosling jumping up and down in front of them like a little kid. For the baffled: this video
There is a great TED talk by Hans Rosling showing the same improving global condition through different metrics. this video
And here's some data about what's happened to the world (not so much "why", but "what") this video