3 ms·

I would expect age to be somewhat skewed toward 20-somethings, but not so strongly. Makes me wonder if this is an accurate picture of developers in the US.

by JHof 14y ago

glaugh 14y ago
Yeah, in an ideal world we'd have found the real-world stats for that kind of information and weighted the responses appropriately. Though of course we'd still have selection bias questions of who chooses to answer the survey or not.
sageikosa 14y ago
Those with more experience (and/or older) spend less time on StackOverflow, and/or less time answering surveys.
- rkuykendall-com 14y ago
  This probably has more to do with the environment that these developers learned to code in. Stack Overflow was a huge part of my journey as a programmer, but their journey probably included more reference books and colleagues.
  - VLM 14y ago
    That would assume that developers who stop learning remain employed as developers.
    - jhgaylor 14y ago
      This assumes that Stack Overflow is the only way to continue learning as a developer.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    My programming journey started more than a decade before Stack Overflow came into existence, but Stack Overflow-style forums were always a very big part of it, so the concept is certainly not new to me. I've found some utility in the site when I want to see a quick API reference example from a popular library, but find most of the content to be not particularly interesting to me at this stage. I have found that there is minimal content in the subjects I am interested in today, with more dead ends than answers, leaving very little draw to the site for me. Based on my own history, I feel like if I had started programming when Stack Overflow was an available resource I would still be at the stage where the kind of content on the site would be incredibly fascinating. I used to eat that stuff up like it was going out of style. But at some point you start to see the same patterns and it all begins to feel repetitive, even if the names have changed. Perhaps people with longer programming histories simply outgrow Stack Overflow? I still turn to it once in a while, but don't see it as the incredible resource many others seem to.

I would expect age to be somewhat skewed toward 20-somethings, but not so strongly. Makes me wonder if this is an accurate picture of developers in the US.

by JHof 14y ago

I would expect age to be somewhat skewed toward 20-somethings, but not so strongly. Makes me wonder if this is an accurate picture of developers in the US.

glaugh 14y ago

Yeah, in an ideal world we'd have found the real-world stats for that kind of information and weighted the responses appropriately. Though of course we'd still have selection bias questions of who chooses to answer the survey or not.

sageikosa 14y ago

Those with more experience (and/or older) spend less time on StackOverflow, and/or less time answering surveys.

rkuykendall-com 14y ago
This probably has more to do with the environment that these developers learned to code in. Stack Overflow was a huge part of my journey as a programmer, but their journey probably included more reference books and colleagues.
- VLM 14y ago
  That would assume that developers who stop learning remain employed as developers.
  - jhgaylor 14y ago
    This assumes that Stack Overflow is the only way to continue learning as a developer.
- randomdata 14y ago
  My programming journey started more than a decade before Stack Overflow came into existence, but Stack Overflow-style forums were always a very big part of it, so the concept is certainly not new to me. I've found some utility in the site when I want to see a quick API reference example from a popular library, but find most of the content to be not particularly interesting to me at this stage. I have found that there is minimal content in the subjects I am interested in today, with more dead ends than answers, leaving very little draw to the site for me. Based on my own history, I feel like if I had started programming when Stack Overflow was an available resource I would still be at the stage where the kind of content on the site would be incredibly fascinating. I used to eat that stuff up like it was going out of style. But at some point you start to see the same patterns and it all begins to feel repetitive, even if the names have changed. Perhaps people with longer programming histories simply outgrow Stack Overflow? I still turn to it once in a while, but don't see it as the incredible resource many others seem to.