All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Lies, meaningless statistics and extrapolations

ziggy on 2003-05-06T17:45:37

I really ought to stop reading C|Net News.com. Case in point:

Usage of Microsoft's popular Visual Basic development language--used by about half of all professional programmers--may be on the wane, according to a recent study.

[...] But the Evans Data survey of 600 developers in North America found that many Visual Basic developers are exploring non-Microsoft options, like Java, which they see as more suitable for new projects. Microsoft sells a Java tool, called Visual J#, but it can only be used for development of applications that run on Windows.

Hrm. I wonder what Evans Data would find if they did a survey among OSCon attendees (roughly double their sample for this study, ergo twice as accurate as this VB study):
  1. 95% of all programmers who use open source tools program in Perl
  2. Java development is on the wane -- less than 1% of developers use the language. Java 1.4 is the most used version of Java among programmers who do use the language.
  3. Less than 1% of programmers who use open source tools are not native english speakers. This includes programmers from Europe, Asia and Africa. No programmers in these regions use Java, Python, Ruby or Tcl.
  4. Half of all open source developers use Apple laptops.
  5. All open source developers are white, overweight men between the ages of 18 and 34. Few exercise regularly.