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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

This poll from a year ago regarding age is probably more representative: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2175588

Results pasted here:

    Age    Points
    ---    ------
    0-10   39 (0.6%)
    11-15  32 (0.5%)
    16-20  462 (7.5%)
    21-25  1620 (26.4%)
    26-30  1945 (31.6%)
    31-35  1049 (17.1%)
    36-40  488 (7.9%)
    41-45  269 (4.4%)
    46-50  117 (1.9%)
    51-55  54 (0.9%)
    56-60  35 (0.6%)
    61-65  19 (0.3%)
    66+    19 (0.3%)

edit: Found a male/female poll here from ~3 years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591309. Another age poll from ~3 years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039

    Gender  Points
    ------  ------
    Male    1375 (95%)
    Female  71 (5%)

View on HN

I graphed that data real quick:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chxl=0:|0-10|11-15|16-20|...

There is an obvious bias towards people who are engaged enough to register an account.

On the other hand, it is not as if data from doubleclick is without biases - especially on a site with the kind of people that visits HN.

39 people who are either lying or accidentally clicked on the first option.

I'm not sure you are correct, I began teaching my little sister the most basic forms of programming a few months ago, she's 9 and now she can easily form and use arrays, functions, database loops and simple OOP.

She isn't anywhere near what I would consider a "good" programmer, but she is capable and for her age her intelligence level is phenomenal.

this is great, but it says nothing about how likely a 0-10 year old would be to find the content on hn interesting for any period of time.

it's pretty obvious people are either unable to read, or more likely deliberately trying to skew the results. There will always be those that try to break things, the ones that were likely bullies in high school, didn't get laid in college and are now bored and discontented in their jobs. it's a fraction of every group, but always present.

There are few on HN that claim they started programming at the age of 3 to 8. I'm guessing it's either them or their offsprings...

On a more serious note, does anyone still trust online survey results?

In my opinion starting programming at a young age is almost orthogonal to being interested in HN links and discussions from a young age, mostly because kids have other interests than adults, even if they like programming.

I'm not saying that there aren't any children reading HN btw.

I'm fifteen and have been reading HN for more than a year now, and I would have to agree. The content on HN is interesting for those who intend to make a career out of technology, not necessarily those who program solely because it's fun.

egor83 graphed several polls here:

http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=2175...

http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=3298...

http://hn-stuff.appspot.com/poll_chart/build/?thread_id=3786...

original:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4398621

original Hacker News demographics post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4397332

I think Pingdom's claims are probably representative today - in the last year YC and HN reached mainstream as digg collapsed and reddit grew big enough for people to start looking elsewhere for tech news.

Given the prevalence of the old digg-style groupthink on digg-flavored issues like http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4417382 I'm surprised there's only 44% under-25s.

the only way to explain the sudden and highly pronounced drop-off between 29 and 30 not only here but on the year-by-year graph linked a few days ago (from a single cycle) is that PG considers exactly 30 to be "over the hill" but not 29, and, therefore, being 30 is a very heavy marginal disadvantage versus being 29 when trying to gain acceptance to YC.

There is no way there is really that much of a difference in applicant quality and quantity at that margin: it has to be YC's selection bias.

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