Guess which country is the world's biggest exporter of software? The US? Nope, guess again? No, not China, or Malaysia, or even Indonesia. The world's biggest exporter of software is a misty green island of four million people. That's right, Ireland. The country which had a famine while the rest of Europe was having an industrial revolution. The country whose economy, up until the 1960s was based mainly on farming and tourism. Ireland has created unprecedented success built on massive levels of investment from multinational firms, and most of that comes from the US.