There's nothing special about US software engineering vs. software engineering made elsewhere from a purely technical and know-how point of view.
The key difference is availability of capital and appetite for risk that make US exceptional by enabling a speed of scaling and execution not possible anywhere else (well, other than China).
If US companies that can't be bothered to follow EU laws leave the +500M people market that is the EU, I'm positive some other equally competent alternative (local or otherwise) would appear sooner or later to fill in the gap.
It's interesting how simplicity so often gets mistaken for a lack of sophistication. Designing a language for clarity and maintainability is a laudable goal, and so is choosing to use one. Chasing complexity, or reaching for the latest trendy language that lets you "express yourself" in ten different ways to do the same thing, isn't what makes someone an S-tier engineer. Simplicity isn't a concession. It's a hard discipline.
First, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento is not the Portuguese Prime Minister, but the Minister of Finance.
Second, the tax breaks were removed at the end of last year because of a widespread feeling in the general populace that these were deeply unfair policies that were understood at the root cause of gentrification and unreasonable real estate valuations. The median house price in Lisbon and Porto metro areas, are now above what the p95 Portuguese salary can pay. So yes, speculation and wealthy foreigners are an issue, as it's not Portuguese salaries propping these values.
Third, the party in power does not have a majority in parliament. This means they'll need support from other parties to approve this deeply divise tax break. While I'm sure they'll get the support from the Liberal party, I'm seriously doubtful they'll get it from the other parties. It's also quite likely that we'll have new elections in the next 12 months and the party in power, despite many populistic policies in the last 4 months since they won by a few thousand votes the election, has not yet been able to gain a wider trust from the voters since then. I doubt this tax break will see the light of day anytime soon.
Fourth and finally, there has been zero talks about this in Portuguese media. I feel this is more of a politician talking out of his ass without double/triple checking with the prime minister.
I have not noticed issues with YouTube, but it's been clear to me how gimped Firefox is compared with Chrome on Google Meet. Some missing minor features, sluggish performance and lower streaming quality to name a few.
In practice the vast majority of designers are using Mac, so it's not like it not being cross platform was the problem.
The thing that made Sketch lose against Figma was that they never really tackled the issue of collaboration until Figma came along, leaving it for 3rd parties like Invision and others to solve.
Now they have most of the collaboration features they were missing, but by then it was too late and Figma had all the mindshare.
But if Figma keeps following this route, who knows. We might see Sketch grow in mindshare again.
I opened YouTube music app, for which I pay premium and tried to find the podcasts I listen to. I wasn't able to find any filter for podcasts and neither did search yield the podcasts I listen to via Google Podcasts. FFS Google.
There's nothing special about US software engineering vs. software engineering made elsewhere from a purely technical and know-how point of view.
The key difference is availability of capital and appetite for risk that make US exceptional by enabling a speed of scaling and execution not possible anywhere else (well, other than China).
If US companies that can't be bothered to follow EU laws leave the +500M people market that is the EU, I'm positive some other equally competent alternative (local or otherwise) would appear sooner or later to fill in the gap.