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What programming languages are used late at night?

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Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#11

Post by startupdiscuss »

falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

Whoah! The big news for me is that there is a programmer who rarely uses SO.

I use it constantly. Can you say more about:

1. What your programming set up is.

2. What you do when there is an issue?

I didn't know there was a reasonable alternative. I do the Google -> SO a lot. The only time Google brings up a different page is if the question is REALLY basic like how to use a function.

Edit: added this postscript:

I have found a lot less need to look up things like "are there optional parameters in .len()?" because the IDE helps with that.

I need to look up strange errors that I don't understand. (Like when you install a new library and your code breaks). Those are almost never in the official documentation because they didn't plan for it.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#12

Post by matt4077 »

falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

Self-selection by, for example, inexperienced users is probably a valid criticism of using SO data for inferring a ranking of languages–although my impression is that they are at a scale where this is less and less relevant.

In this case, the point the article is trying to make is actually something different: "What languages do people use for fun", and I'm having a really hard time coming up with any plausible alternative explanations for their data.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#14

Post by onion2k »

falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

Plus someone who is doing dev work at night is more likely to be working alone and they won't have an office full of coworkers to ask before they Google. That's bound to skew the results a little.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#15

Post by TimJYoung »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

And also, languages with good documentation will be referred to less on SO.

Indeed. Likewise, software with good commercial support, software that is older and more stable/having less churn...

There's a lot of SO content regarding working around JS/DOM incompatibilities between browsers. Without those incompatibilities through the years, SO might (incorrectly) think that JS usage is lower than it is.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#16

Post by hsivonen »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

And also, languages with good documentation will be referred to less on SO.

There are also other forums. I prefer Rust’s own user forum over StackOverflow, because the latter is polluted with stale pre-1.0 answers.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#17

Post by matt4077 »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

And also, languages with good documentation will be referred to less on SO.

The article is about fluctuating interest dependent on time of day. Unless Haskell's documentation is worse at night than it is during the day, your perfectly parroted talking-point is controlled for.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#19

Post by matt4077 »

onion2k wrote: post #14
falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

Plus someone who is doing dev work at night is more likely to be working alone and they won't have an office full of coworkers to ask before they Google. That's bound to skew the results a little.

Unless there are some secret Sharepoint Nightclubs or Subversive Subversion Speakeasies I have yet to find, that would affect all languages, and couldn't explain these day/night patterns.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#20

Post by soheil »

onion2k wrote: post #14
falcolas wrote: post #2

Otherwise written as "what programming languages are being asked about late at night." To me, who rarely pulls up SO, correlating SO questions and page views with usage is a bit biased.

Plus someone who is doing dev work at night is more likely to be working alone and they won't have an office full of coworkers to ask before they Google. That's bound to skew the results a little.

I always feel guilty asking questions from coworkers when the answer literally takes me a fraction of the time if I Googled it and opened the first SO link.
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