> I was actually quite surprised to see in some areas they are ahead in digitising things (government services, payments). I expected the opposite.
Why were you surprised by this? Russia is a totalitarian dictatorship, it is quite expected that systems of total control will be actively implemented there. And what is better for total control than digitalized things?
> Russia seems to have better primary, secondary and tertiary education in computing,
I've talked to many Russians and this is complete bs. The quality of education is quite low, but due to the competition created by remote work, programmers were easily paid 5x times more than people with comparable qualifications in other fields. So a lot of youth with a good work ethic put a lot of efforts into self-education in this fields even if they have no access to any systemic education in computing at all.
In other words, in Russia, as in other Eastern European countries, you either do programming, or you are screwed. And the advantage of mathematics is that you don't need a teacher for it (for school level), everything is in the book, one thing after another. All you need is work ethic and motivation.
>Russia is a totalitarian dictatorship, it is quite expected that systems of total control will be actively implemented there. And what is better for total control than digitalized things?
Ah yes, the reason the US is years behind most other country's payments systems is because they have too much freedom.
Why were you surprised by this? Russia is a totalitarian dictatorship, it is quite expected that systems of total control will be actively implemented there. And what is better for total control than digitalized things?
> Russia seems to have better primary, secondary and tertiary education in computing,
I've talked to many Russians and this is complete bs. The quality of education is quite low, but due to the competition created by remote work, programmers were easily paid 5x times more than people with comparable qualifications in other fields. So a lot of youth with a good work ethic put a lot of efforts into self-education in this fields even if they have no access to any systemic education in computing at all.
In other words, in Russia, as in other Eastern European countries, you either do programming, or you are screwed. And the advantage of mathematics is that you don't need a teacher for it (for school level), everything is in the book, one thing after another. All you need is work ethic and motivation.