I'm a programmer. I would like to understand the ecosystem of apps and providers in China so that I can become proficient with them and their integrations.
It is impossible to do that research in English, but I'm also dipping my toes in mandarin. So I'm looking for research h material. A lot. Give me the breadcrumbs to the rabbit hole and I'm all in!
Some questions I'm thinking about are around:
Where should I search for content? What are the main apps people use? How do I find developer documentation? (think developers.facebook.com/, or https://developers.google.com/) What are the most popular frameworks and technologies? Where does it all run? Is it all x86 and x64 and arm? What else is there? Many local spinoffs, like orangepi.org to raspberry pi?
The world is vast and I'm curious.
If you do a lot of coding in popular software languages like Java and Python, eventually you will run into open source projects whose comments and documentation and issues are all in Mandarin. There are also Chinese versions of Stack Overflow, where I have to use Google Translate to read the discussion threads.
It will always be more difficult to understand a language which is not your first, but if there's a language on this planet that would be useful to learn aside from English, it's Mandarin.
I am personally not familiar with any differences in major frameworks between Chinese software ecosystems and American/European ones. But that is surely just my ignorance as a foreigner. Please let us know what you find.