Survey on programming languages

[zachattack05]

If anyone is bored and want's to spend a few moment's filling out a survey on programming languages, I am collecting responses on one here.

[harinath_2007]

NICE dude...I took the survey ..Nice thought..

Just asking.: Why did u asked that gender question :)

[harinath_2007]

Till now , all those who took survey are from Daniweb it seems...wow..

[zachattack05]

Gender is just a generic demographic question. It's anonymous, but once there's enough data you can break stuff down by gender, and say "Males tend to think ______ about language A, while females tend to think ______ about language A." Same with age and location.

It's just something for fun, I love collecting data and analysing results it's fun. Statistics was one of my favourite classes in college.

[harinath_2007]

Oh..Nice thought anyway. Programming was/is/will be one of my favourite subject. :) Dont forget to post the survey results here after you get and analyze enough data. Waiting for the results....Lets see which language wins :)

[ObSys]

Cool little survey....never heard of F# before. Is it commonly used and if so what for?

[Sahil89]

Curious quesion
Why there are only five countries in Where do you live?

[extr3mex]

Python !!! :D

[zachattack05]

I only put 5 countries because it would take ages to type them all by hand, it's not that I don't like your country if it's not listed...I promise! :)

In reality it's just a question that gets general demographics and it isn't something that is all that important to the validity of the survey. Is there a country I should add to the list for future surveys?

[zachattack05]

harinath_2007;

You can see a summary of the results of the survey so far here.

[mike_2000_17]

Is there a country I should add to the list for future surveys?

You probably could just use different continents or sub-continents instead. With about a dozen sub-continents (North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia, Middle East, East Asia, South-east Asia, and Oceania), it'll be manageable, and representative.

[zachattack05]

Good idea mike, I never considered that really. I think I'll do that in the future!

[Sahil89]

@zachattack05 I found it hard to read charts becuase values and chart was not aligned.

And how can I check the results I mean can you provide the link or we will have to wait till you make it public?

[zachattack05]

I can share the table data from Google Docs if you are interested, that way you can download it and review the data yourself as well.

I'll do that once I get home (getting ready to leave work now) and I'll post a link as soon as it's marked public.

[BigPaw]

This is just me with a meandering thought, but I was wondering why you chose those languages in particular? The reason I ask is there was a question in your survey that asked whether a chosen language was still considered mainstream. It may help your statistics if you had a broader spectrum of languages.

The reason I say this is, with having worked in numerous avenues of "computing", there are several mare languages out there that would surprise many as to how extensively they are still being used. One example would be COBOL, still used by many banking systems, numerous other financial institutions, in fact many mainframes around the world. In the 80's a company put me on a college course the learn COBOL, and learn it I did. But I honestly believed back then that it was a language that would not survive the 80's because of the constant development of new computers and their broadening implementations. Look now, that language, and other languages that are used in the science community, are alive and kicking.

What you've begun here is a stroke of genius and I'm looking forward to seeing the final results. :)

[zachattack05]

That's a good point. There are many languages out there that are still used that aren't on the list.

I haven't programmed with half of those languages, I've never had the need to learn them and haven't run into them before (I do have a book on COBOL though oddly enough, but I'm not sure where I got it).

I picked those languages for different reasons, I just inherintly put the languages I personally knew and use(d) on the list and threw in others that I have heard of or seen references to either here on this site or just throughout conversations with others. I didn't pick them for any specific reason other than that. I will say that after reviewing some of the answers, the "languages" that some people have put down as ones they use or have used are quite broad. The next time I create a survey I'll have to be a bit more specific and define a few terms for people. An example, I have seen responses (not just on my survey but others) where HTML is presented as a programming language, CSS is also a "other" language that a respondant listed. These may be considered programming languages by some, but to me HTML and CSS are not programming languages perse, just like I wouldn't consider XML, PHP, and JavaScript to be programming languages. They are text, which is interpreted by another application and executed. To some, that's enough, the browser (or server in the case of PHP) acts as the compiler and then automatically executes, but I just see it differently. That's why these surveys are interesting to me.

[zachattack05]

I forgot to make the sheet public last night, here's the link to the spreadsheet of answers so far. That shouldn't require you to sign-in or anything.

[pritaeas]

just like I wouldn't consider XML, PHP, and JavaScript to be programming languages

If that is your opinion, then why did you include Perl ? ;) It is also an interpreted language (not compiled).

[zachattack05]

Wow, excellent point...I have no response to that, but your right! I guess by default that would include the others. Good catch.