What technologies should I focus on to work as a developer in Japan?

Question

I'm thinking of one day moving to Japan and I was wondering if anyone here has any experience working there.

I'm curious as to what languages/technology are popular there for web development and software development.

I have heard Ruby is/was strong there due to its founder being Japanese.

What would you recommend someone focus on if they wanted to work as a developer in Japan?

I have heard Microsoft has a strong base in Japan, but my guess is that whatever platform has supported unicode or Shift-JIS the best would be the strongest.

Answer 1

You should be more worried about the way of life in Japan not about the technologies.

Working for one company lifetime is standard. Change jobs & companies while trying to find your niche may just not be comprehended by locals.

Also you'll need to somewhat adore and worship your boss and management. Not like the "buddy" in the next room and everybody is a team without hierarchies.

Koreans the same I heard.

Answer 2

Ive mainly worked for the embedded and windows GUI section of IT so I'm don't have direct experience myself, but some people that I know doing web programming tended to use Java a lot.

At least as I remember a few years back anyway.

It probably depends on what your company is developing for, are they making stuff in-house? or are they getting jobs from clients?

There maybe a certain trend depending on what industry the client is in.

I'll ask some of my co-workers and return again.

Adding, I noticed that you where asking for software development as well. Software development, especially in GUI, Microsoft has very strong hold. This is due to the lack of engineers that can make cross-platform GUI apps.

I once saw a system that had a Real Time OS in it, but had a Windows machine just for the human interface.

So if you where to work for a place that needed GUI apps on non-Windows systems, that would be a big plus. If you where working on a Windows team, Microsoft would be the way to go. Also some companies tend to use older versions of Visual Studios.

Answer 3

As a direct reply to your question

I would say Japan is kind of slow on Rails part, there is a strong believe that Rails/Ruby might not be usable for business screens.

I have been living there for 15years, and have been working on multiple languages.

I would recommend

1) Ruby/Rails --> look for companies working on this field, it is kind of hard to locate good RoR programmers. There is a group of people but still not a big movements.

2) Php there are still lots of application developed using phps.

3) Java/C#/C the classic, if you are planning to work on big team there this are still the standards. All the big companies ( those like NEC, Hitachi etc. ) spend lots of money building frameworks on Java and they still wanna stick with it.

From my personal opinion I would say software in Japan is more towards outdated technologies. Most of the market are still control by stereotype ppl with strong old believes which I could say, "Hosyuha" which means "conservatives".

Other Reverences that I could give you to support

1) Mixi ( the biggest sns in Japan ) build in 2005 --> Perl 2) Gree ( second biggest sns ) --> PHP 3) Cookpad ( cooking recipies sites ) --> Re coded in RoR 4) Rakutan --> PHP/Perl/Ruby etc.

Have fun.