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Top Technologies Used By YC Companies
- Killswitch 14y agoWhat baffles me is how this site users themselves seem to dislike PHP a lot, yet it's the most used language of these companies... So why the hate?
- SkyMarshal 14y agoIirc, PHP still leads Python and Ruby in general, so the YC numbers merely reflect the greater programming language ecosystem. Additionally, Facebook has made PHP scalable with the HipHop compiler and other open source tools, so that's no longer a major reason not to use it.
- coderdude 14y agoA couple reasons come to mind: - PHP might be the most practical choice for some of these companies. The founder or lead tech might be most proficient in PHP for real-world applications (even if he adores Python or Ruby). - PHP might be the language that everyone on the team knows so they choose it to keep everyone equally involved in the production of the site. - The people commenting on HN aren't necessarily people who start companies (truer now than it ever was). Edit: Also, it might be the case that some of these servers purposely lie about what language is used on the backend to thwart script kiddies.
- phillmv 14y agoRuby on Rails Token =~ Rails 3/whenever the csrf token was introduced? (2.3ish?)
- coderdude 14y agoYeah, they're splitting hairs on the Ruby count (not sure why). But I'm assuming that at least the number of PHP installs is somewhat accurate which is still a good number of the sites. Once you add the two Ruby counts together it does win out over PHP (which is more in line with what people would expect from SV types).
- whatusername 14y agoAt least 10 of those 31 PHP sites are likely for the CMS Frontend. (Wordpress and Drupal)
- ryanhuff 14y agoMaybe its because the YC founders are not representative of HN's readers. If so, why that's the case could make for interesting discussion.
- rjsamson 14y agoYeah - I noticed the same thing with Python / Django being so poorly represented - seems like there's an disproportionate number of Python related posts and discussions on HN - but it could just be my internal bias as a Ruby guy :)
- rauljara 14y agoIt's not the most used language, actually, though I don't think it's your fault for misreading the chart. Ruby on Rails and "Ruby on Rails Token" were split into two different categories, based on how they figured out the site was using Rails. If you combine those two categories, ruby has higher usage than php. Not to defend the php hate, of course. Just to point out that it's not actually the most popular language, despite the misleading graph.
- rickmb 14y agoPeople that want to get stuff done don't waste their time hating on other people's tools. Almost everyone on this site, including devoted PHP devs, recognizes the fact that PHP isn't exactly an elegant and well-designed language. The pointless "hate" however only comes from a small group of people for reasons really only known to them. But if you look outside the world of programming languages to the kind of people that loudly proclaim to hate something, I think you'll get a pretty good idea of the kind of people we're talking about. These are not the majority of users of HN. They just feel safe here, like hooligans feel safe in a stadium filled with supporters of the same team.
- Killswitch 14y agoProbably one of the best replies I've read in a while man. Thank you.
- astrofinch 14y agoI would guess that a lot of Python sites are not getting counted for some reason, maybe because Python doesn't broadcast its presence the way PHP does. I'm pretty sure Dropbox and MixPanel at least make heavy use of Python, but neither is listed as a Python user. This list looks extremely noisy to me in general.
- mixmax 14y agoThere are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. Bjarne Stroustrup
- danneu 14y ago> * PHP usage is based on server side implementation so a server might support PHP it doesn't necessarily mean the site is written in PHP
- wulczer 14y agoFirst of all, as mentioned below if the server advertises PHP support, it's considered that the page is made with PHP (so a standard Apache install that comes with mod_php will make it think you're using PHP). And second, I put my company's (admittedly not YC, but hey) homepage there just to try and since we're using a hosted Wordpress for the landing page so that business people can change the copy easier, it thought we're using PHP when in reality the app doesn't have a single line in it.
- cocoflunchy 14y agoI find it hard to believe that 15% of these sites don't use CSS?
- nthitz 14y agoAdobe Dreamweaver is a framework now? News to me! Seriously though: There is really too much noise in some of these diagrams to get much out of them. What surprised me most was nginx overtaking Apache in this sample group.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- simonw 14y agoYou missed our site, lanyrd.com (W2011) - out of interest, what was your soure for the list of YC companies?
- archangel_one 14y agoThe pie charts seem like an odd way of counting some of these; for example, one site could use Facebook Like, Google +1 and a Tweet button all at once, but showing them as slices in a pie chart implies to me that the options are mutually exclusive.
- msluyter 14y agoThe pie charts also don't match the percentages in the tables. Took me a second to notice, but the pie chart shows the relative percentage of usage by sites using a particular category, while the table shows % sties out of total # of sites.
- joshmaker 14y agoNot just odd, but completely wrong. For data that doesn't add up to 100%, they should be using a bar chart or some other representation of data. Unfortunately, this is the sort of sloppiness that makes me wonder what other amateur mistakes might have been made in collating the data.
- BigTuna 14y agoIIS took a roughly 5% share on web servers but Windows doesn't appear on the OS breakdown at all...
- fragsworth 14y agoThese are startups. IIS may have taken some of the market for more stable companies but it's not really practical for cash-strapped startups to use IIS. Also, college talent typically has greater affinity for Linux.
- jaredsohn 14y agoCash-strapped startups can get the software for free (for a few years) via BizSpark (http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark).
- facorreia 14y agoThe point is, how one graph shows they're actually using IIS and the other shows no one is using Windows Server?
- bss 14y agoGreat having statistics like this, but for most of the statistics the pie chart is rubbish. It only makes sense in the case where the companies really only uses one of the technologies posible. Bar graphs would have been better. EDIT: Seems like I need to refresh the comments before i post my own, archangel_one beat me to it.
- Matt_Cutts 14y agoInteresting to see which companies are savvy enough to sign up for Google's free webmaster tools: http://trends.builtwith.com/tech-usage/Y-Combinator/Google-Webmaster http://trends.builtwith.com/tech-usage/Y-Combinator/Google-W... The list includes Dropbox, Scribd, WePay, OMGPOP, Loopt, and Weebly, but a lot of sites are missing out on potentially useful information--only 18% of 136 sites were detected as signed up with webmaster tools.
- tpiddy 14y agocan't you verify with google analytics account now? the verification key isn't necessary right?
- Matt_Cutts 14y agoThat's true. There's actually four ways to verify a site (meta tag, upload a file, DNS, or Google Analytics): http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35179 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&... Lots of people use the meta tag method though.
- garazy 14y agoHi Matt, The site won't show those that aren't doing non-meta ways so I suspect the actual registration would be higher than this. Although you can see the actual trending at http://trends.builtwith.com/Web-Master/Google-Webmaster http://trends.builtwith.com/Web-Master/Google-Webmaster
- coderdude 14y agoI used to sign up for webmaster tools but after a while I just didn't find the utility in it anymore. I'm able to control which domain Google sees as canonical (bare vs. www) without using webmaster tools. That was why I started using it in the first place. Though it's nice to see crawl errors or other potential issues. From what I understand GA isn't showing search keywords now for users that are logged into their Google account (totally frustrating change as more of your users seem to be logged in now). Webmaster tools does kind of show this information but without any of the neat metrics that go along with a GA report. I've also heard horror stories. There was an article (or possibly just a commenter) on here not too long ago that was describing how their position on the SERPs dropped dramatically just a week after signing up for webmaster tools. That kind of thing sticks with you, even if it's not true (and I do suspect there were other variables involved that he wasn't telling us). So, it's not all about whether someone is savvy or not. ;) Edit: Almost forgot! A killer feature of WT that I think no one should do without is that it shows you what pages on the web are linking to your site. I'd forgotten how awesome that is.
- guimarin 14y agoI thought it was very telling that out of the 136 companies surveyed, only 2 had a payment system. Speaks volumes about the sort of companies YC is trying to incubate/build.
- agosnell 14y agoI'm pretty sure that's just sites using paypal/google checkout, and not including other payment processing methods.
- tzs 14y agoOnly 2 were using a payment system that the reporting site tracks. That doesn't mean only two were accepting payments. Notice that both that showed up were intrusive payment systems. What I mean by "intrusive" is that they take you away from the site you are shopping on to enter your payment and shipping information on the payment system site. My guess is that this is the only kind of system the reporting site detects, because you can find it by noting the links to the payment system site. If a site were using a transparent system, where the payment and shipping information are posted back to their own server and they deal with it on their own backend, it probably would not show up. For instance, if your cart checkout just posts back to your PHP or Ruby code, and that code uses Braintree's PHP or Ruby API to process the payment through Braintree, there is no way the reporting site is going to know that you are using Braintree. Same if you are using Merchant e-Solutions, PayPal's PayFlow Pro, or something similar.
- dialtone 14y agoOnly 15% of them are using advertising tools? Are YC startups averse to this type of marketing?
- littleidea 14y agoInteresting information that I'm genuinely interested in but the execution and delivery leave me scratching my head. The operating system and web server graphs make no sense. mod_ssl? varnish? Makes me question what was asked and who was answering. I'd also contend pie charts aren't the best way to represent this information, especially in the categories where there are only a small number of responses.
- molf 14y agoMost likely all information was gathered automatically. According to their FAQ (on the right side of the page) they check the homepage and attempt to detect the presence of any of the listed technologies. I agree pie charts are probably the worst way to visualise the statistics. For example, it gives no sense at all of the ubiquity of any technology. Also the accuracy seems to be lacking. I was surprised by seeing their (automated) claim that only 85% of the sites use CSS. That seems strange since I can't actually remember having seen a site recently that doesn't use CSS on its homepage. Checking some of the unlisted sites confirmed my suspicion; they just failed to detect CSS on those pages. Finally, these statistics only give insight into what is used on the home page of the given domain. The home page may just be part of a (separate) marketing website, so don't be fooled into thinking these statistics represent the products/services built by these companies. Disregarding all the problems with these stats, it is indeed interesting to see a comprehensive list like this. I find their list of technology trends [1] even more interesting, though. [1]: http://trends.builtwith.com/ http://trends.builtwith.com/
- jcromartie 14y agoThe pie chart indicates that only 15% of companies use CSS? That's clearly the wrong way to display this data. Very few of the technologies covered are mutually exclusive.
- signalsignal 14y agoAlso, noone uses Java and only one company uses Perl. Interesting or misleading? You be the judge.
- truncate 14y agoI'm more amazed by the fact that PHP tops there. I expected something like Python or Ruby there.
- smountcastle 14y agoI think if you combine Ruby on Rails and 'Ruby on Rails Token' it's larger than PHP. It's strange to me that they track this by their own detection algorithm instead of aggregating based on framework.
- coopdog 14y agoAnd if that's true, why aren't there more php articles and comments on HN? Are php developers that uninterested and apathetic about their own language?
- windsurfer 14y agoYeah, pretty much. It's a whole lotta "meh".
- jmathai 14y agoThe PHP community isn't terribly vocal. Probably because it's been around for ages and the dos and don't are very well understood by people who care to know. I personally don't read many PHP related articles because, well, there isn't much new to learn. It's an old/stable language with well understood constructs. Part of the problem is that the Rails community being as vocal as they are make it seem like everyone is using rails. In this case perception is not reality.
- michael_fine 14y agoI wish that they had also shown what hosting they were using. That would have been the most interesting to me.
- Matt_Cutts 14y agoI think http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2010 http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2010 might be close to what you want?
- kilemensi 14y ago"detected using at least one of the technologies we track in this group" - does this mean some technology usage could be higher but it's absent because they're not tracking it? Frameworks - How the hell do they "track" some of these frameworks here because the produced html/css/js could look exactly the same coming from say flask on python and jersey/jax-rs on java?
- garazy 14y agoIt's nice to see builtwith on the HN homepage, thanks for submitting this page Alex. I'm reading through everyone's feedback and will make changes accordingly, thanks everyone for commenting. A few notes and things I will clean up - * The pie charts I admit appear misleading thanks for affirming this, for widgets and technologies they show the leading tool but for document based technologies like CSS/JS they don't look right. 15% of sites aren't using CSS, > 85% are, and I suspect the rest are either dead sites or some other issue. I'll look at swapping to bar graphs which some of you have mentioned might be a good alternative * PHP usage is based on server side implementation so a server might support PHP it doesn't necessarily mean the site is written in PHP * The source of the list is yclist.com from about 3 months ago You can lookup individual sites at http://builtwith.com http://builtwith.com such as http://builtwith.com/lanyrd.com http://builtwith.com/lanyrd.com Thanks again! Gary
- jordo37 14y agoI think the pie charts aren't just broken for document based technologies, they are wrong for anything where a user can have more than one of the tools. For example on our site we are using multiple types of advertising (including our own), multiple types of widgets, etc. That being said, very cool that you were able to pull this together - the raw data here is very neat and it would be cool if we could even dive in more and end users could play with it in different charts, etc.
- garazy 14y agoThanks I've added a link to a CSV with the domains and technologies found in the run (Which was a few months ago now). http://trends.builtwith.com/Y-Combinator.txt http://trends.builtwith.com/Y-Combinator.txt
- zackzackzack 14y agoPut up a copy of the categories and the technologies in each please. I want to go through and use d3 to make it look prettier and convey more information.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mck- 14y agoInteresting that NO ONE uses Windows.
- praveenhm 14y agoReally nice collections
- freshlog 14y agoStripe's suspiciously missing from this list. I think there should be at least one YC company using Stripe at least?
- fasouto 14y agoI am the only one surprised with the Django representation?
- mattlong 14y agoThe way it's detecting Django (checking for the Django CSRF cookie) is false-negative prone. For example, our site (crocodoc.com) uses Django but is not registering for it; probably because we don't have any forms on our homepage so no CSRF cookie.
- nhebb 14y agoTwo observations: - X-FRAME-OPTIONS: IMO, more people should know about and use this. - Adroll: Would be much more effective if it didn't keep showing me ads for products that I already use. I wish it had an opt-out so I'd quit seeing the same ads over and over again everywhere I go online. P.S. I know others balk at the pie charts (for good reason), but for me it's irrelevant. I go straight for the numbers and the charts add a nice visual break so that it doesn't look like a wall of text. So at least they have that going for them. :-)
- tpiddy 14y agoAdRoll does have an opt out, through the adchoices links on ads and through, http://www.adroll.com/about/privacy http://www.adroll.com/about/privacy Most advertisers that do display retarget attempt to build segments and suppress ads to buyers/logins from potential new customers. this can be difficult though with cookie deletion and people using multiple devices/browsers.
- alex_lod 14y agoI'd love to see the breakdown of hosting providers -- Heroku, EC2, AppFog, Rackspace, etc.
- greghinch 14y ago3 using FrontPage?!
- ghurlman 14y agoFrontpage Server Extensions != Frontpage That said, I too am horrified. Maybe some of the newer ASP.net deployment stuff appears to be plain vanilla FPSE from the outside.
- dangoldin 14y agoPretty interesting stuff - one thing that stood out for me was that the Google+1 was more common than the Twitter Tweet.
- blrblr 14y agoBOGUS!!!
- josephcooney 14y agoObviously this analysis is meaningless if the company isn't building an internet-facing web application. And even if they are it isn't that interesting, as it doesn't capture anything about the back-end. Stick a nginx caching reverse proxy and change a few HTTP headers and you've got something that looks completely different as well.
- alagu 14y agoIts interesting to note that nginx is overtaking apache. Some data is highly misinterpreted. (mod_ssl as Operating system, Dreamweaver as framework etc).
- pknerd 14y agoIts kind of surprising for me that PHP is popular among YC companies. I thought RoR/Python is more demanding than PHP but I was wrong.
- zachgemignani 14y agoA visualization of this YC data as compared to technologies used across the top million sites. http://slice-publish.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rnkjSHj873J/# http://slice-publish.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/rnkj...