Perl programming survey (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Perl programming survey (2010)

survey.perlfoundation.org

44 pointsdraegtun18 comments

Please note that it is useful to fill this out if you've used Perl in the past, whether or not you do now. People are sure to analyze the data in a number of ways, and will be interesting to contrast views from people who use the language actively with those who don't any more.

I found the question about "school" ambiguous.

Depending on your location, this may or may not include university.

I don't really get the point of these surveys. All they do is quantify what we already know -- lots of people are using Perl, and most people get paid for that. In theory, if the survey asked what areas people were using Perl in, then grants could be given to shore up modules for the popular areas. But if people want to do that, they will do it anyway... and if nobody wants to do it, only someone very desperate for some spare change will do it, with results that match.

So other than liking to click stuff and look at data, I don't get it. It seems to me that if the Perl community stopped yelling, "no really, we aren't dead", everyone would stop thinking that.

It seems to me that if the Perl community stopped yelling, "no really, we aren't dead", everyone would stop thinking that.

I totally agree with this statement.

However I don't think this survey is being carried out with this purpose in mind. So I'm hopeful that some interesting and perhaps useful metrics will be gathered by this census.

A couple ambiguous questions. What other dynamic languages have I formally studied? Does that mean weakly typed? In that case none, though obviously I've picked them up here and there.

> What percentage of your work time working on software projects is spent not writing code?

If we're looking at actual time I spend writing code, probably 5%. But then that's not counting reading code and testing code I've just written. So I don't know, it seems like that's a very small sliver of development when it feels like people are wondering how much time one spends in meetings or doing mockups.

I stopped filling it in when I got to this question. Ambiguity is a killer in questionaires like this.

They have a question: Please indicate up to five programming languages that you use frequently [excluding Perl]

Followed by: Where does Perl belong in this list?

Why didn't they just ask "Please list up to 6 programming languages that you use frequently INCLUDING perl?

My thinking here is to simplify and clarify the question.

The downvotes make me wonder if you disagree with my premise "These two questions could be simpler/clearer" or my attempt at a solution.

Care to tell me which?

I liked the XKCD survey's "gender" question better.

Q: Do you have a Y chromosome?

Best captcha ever: Unit rash (a test suite gone ugly?)

Select boxes don't work on the iPad.

Worked for me on the iPhone...

Edit: I could get it to work on the iPhone by using the crazy two finger click/slide gesture I use for select boxes.

Could you describe that? I was unable to get it to work on the iPod touch.

On reflection though, I guess I'm running an old version of the OS on that one.

Literally click and hold with one finger and then with another perform an awkward scrolling type movement - usually seems to work but it's hardly elegant!

Does the iPad do the single response select boxes OK?

I don't personally like seeing select boxes used in surveys. Much prefer to stick to radio (single-response) and checkboxes (multi-response).

iPad having difficulty rendering HTML that's been out for sometime? It doesn't seem like it would be hard to solve.

Actually, the select box options are transformed into a list of divs with some javascript to make it look like a select and then the original select box is hidden.

Good idea, I filled one out.

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