4 ms·

The 'Stack Overflow Developer Survey' is simply not a reliable source of information on what languages are popular and unpopular. Most programmers don't use St

The 'Stack Overflow Developer Survey' is simply not a reliable source of information on what languages are popular and unpopular. Most programmers don't use Stack Overflow to the extent that they'd fill in a programming language survey. The sort of people that actively engage with internet programming forums are also the sort of people that actively engage with new programming languages.

o1y32 3y ago
Well said. Where I work, the only people who talk about languages and compare languages are the people who are language nerds, who know many languages and are learning/discovering new languages. Most people just chug along with whatever their job requires and provides -- the default IDEs and other tools with default settings. They may not even know the latest syntaxes/features in the language they use every day.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  > They may not even know the latest syntaxes/features in the language they use every day. Always annoying when you get an interview question of the different between an Interface and Abstract Class from somebody looking for a Java 7 answer ... > Most people just chug along with whatever their job requires and provides -- the default IDEs and other tools with default settings. Well, nothing wrong with doing a good job with the tools you have but if you don't ever evaluate new tools ever then you're almost certainly going to be doing things less efficient than you otherwise could. I'm not able to find the article but IRC it's a Joel Spokeys article on every project has 3 innovation tokens and I think sometimes that should be a goal of no more but also sometimes no less. His idea was it being a maximum amount of new risk you take on; but sometimes I think it should also be considered a goal. If you're familiar with MySQL it takes 0 tokens to use but if you decide to use (new to you) Postres then it costs a token. Sure if the whole project is a short time frame it probably makes sense to only loop in 1 new technology but if its a multi-year project I think it's worth it to burn a week evaluating 3 new things on the off-chance one of them saves a week+.
brabel 3y ago
> The sort of people that actively engage with internet programming forums are also the sort of people that actively engage with new programming languages. That's a pretty bold claim... even though I think it may look like this is the case, I very much doubt you would be found correct if a proper study was ever made to find out.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > That's a pretty bold claim... even though I think it may look like this is the case, I very much doubt you would be found correct if a proper study was ever made to find out. I don't think it's that bold. I have a related but slightly different take: more motivated and smarter developers are more inclined to use unusual or new tooling. As a result, the new tooling's userbase is almost entirely composed of people not minding the hard path, and steep learning curve. Even wrote a blog post about it (https://www.lelanthran.com https://www.lelanthran.com - read the post about the average developer effect).
- einpoklum 3y ago
  > That's a pretty bold claim... I didn't think we could make bold claims on HN. italic claims, tops :-(
ryzvonusef 3y ago
I like the Format of the developer survey though, and I wish HN had one of its own. @dang is this a possibility?
einpoklum 3y ago
It's also been marred somewhat by the politics of StackExchange management vis-a-vis the community on their network in recent years.

o1y32 3y ago

Well said. Where I work, the only people who talk about languages and compare languages are the people who are language nerds, who know many languages and are learning/discovering new languages. Most people just chug along with whatever their job requires and provides -- the default IDEs and other tools with default settings. They may not even know the latest syntaxes/features in the language they use every day.

lesuorac 3y ago
> They may not even know the latest syntaxes/features in the language they use every day. Always annoying when you get an interview question of the different between an Interface and Abstract Class from somebody looking for a Java 7 answer ... > Most people just chug along with whatever their job requires and provides -- the default IDEs and other tools with default settings. Well, nothing wrong with doing a good job with the tools you have but if you don't ever evaluate new tools ever then you're almost certainly going to be doing things less efficient than you otherwise could. I'm not able to find the article but IRC it's a Joel Spokeys article on every project has 3 innovation tokens and I think sometimes that should be a goal of no more but also sometimes no less. His idea was it being a maximum amount of new risk you take on; but sometimes I think it should also be considered a goal. If you're familiar with MySQL it takes 0 tokens to use but if you decide to use (new to you) Postres then it costs a token. Sure if the whole project is a short time frame it probably makes sense to only loop in 1 new technology but if its a multi-year project I think it's worth it to burn a week evaluating 3 new things on the off-chance one of them saves a week+.

brabel 3y ago

> The sort of people that actively engage with internet programming forums are also the sort of people that actively engage with new programming languages. That's a pretty bold claim... even though I think it may look like this is the case, I very much doubt you would be found correct if a proper study was ever made to find out.

lelanthran 3y ago
> That's a pretty bold claim... even though I think it may look like this is the case, I very much doubt you would be found correct if a proper study was ever made to find out. I don't think it's that bold. I have a related but slightly different take: more motivated and smarter developers are more inclined to use unusual or new tooling. As a result, the new tooling's userbase is almost entirely composed of people not minding the hard path, and steep learning curve. Even wrote a blog post about it (https://www.lelanthran.com https://www.lelanthran.com - read the post about the average developer effect).
einpoklum 3y ago
> That's a pretty bold claim... I didn't think we could make bold claims on HN. italic claims, tops :-(

ryzvonusef 3y ago

I like the Format of the developer survey though, and I wish HN had one of its own. @dang is this a possibility?

einpoklum 3y ago

It's also been marred somewhat by the politics of StackExchange management vis-a-vis the community on their network in recent years.