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Comment by johnfn | Hacker News Reader

> Clojure is clearly a niche language, but Stack Overflow is also not a place that Clojure developers typically go, so Clojure usage there is going to be under reported.

It seems unclear to me why Clojure developers would not go to Stack Overflow, and especially unclear why they would avoid SO more than developers in other niche languages. When I learned Clojure, I spent a very long time on SO.

I suppose I’m just a little skeptical. I often hear similar sounding rationales - “oh don’t worry, <my favorite language/technology> is under-represented by the data”. Somehow every niche technology is underreported by the data! But to an outside observer, Clojure to me seems to be used very rarely in the types of engineering work I come in contact with, and 1% doesn’t seem that wrong to me.

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OTOH, 1% of a large group is still quite a lot. How many programmers are there in the world? Google says estimated 47 million. 1% of that is almost half a million people. If there are half a million Clojure programmers, Clojure is quite a successful technology! (Sadly, I doubt there are that many)...

Stack Overflow is one of those sites that benefit from a network effect. If there are few users of a particular technology on it, people are less likely to get questions answered and therefore less likely to interact with it again.

That said, it's always worth checking the numbers, so I took a look at the 2024 State of Clojure Survey. Around 18% of those surveyed used Stack Overflow, while the 2024 Python Developers Survey had at least 43% of respondents using Stack Overflow.

Now, you might well say that even so Clojure is still a niche language - and I agree. But it may be the case that instead of a 1.3% share, Clojure has a 3% share - if we assume that the Python community's usage numbers are more typical.

I’m not sure if you can draw that conclusion. The clojure survey asks where users went to interact with other people who use Clojure. Who interacts with people on SO? I’m sure a vast majority just read the answer and move on. It makes sense that a Slack server would be the #1 result.

The Python question is more broad: “Where do you typically learn about [python]?”

Posting a question on SO and having it answered is interacting with people. I'm unsure how you could interpret that any other way. And given that podcasts and YouTube were part of the answers, I think it's clear that passively listening to people counts as an interaction as well within the context of the question.

The Python question I'd say is more narrow, as it asks specifically about "new tools and technologies". What if I have a question about an tool I've been using for a while?

In any case, my point is not what market share Clojure actually has, but that there's reasonable doubt in using SO's developer survey as a basis for that answer. If a far smaller percentage of the Clojure community uses SO than is average for a language, then it's going to skew the results.

> Posting a question on SO and having it answered is interacting with people. I'm unsure how you could interpret that any other way.

Yes, but a large percentage of people use SO without posting a question - e.g. an answer pops up in a google result.

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