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What programming languages are used late at night?

stackoverflow.blog

21–30 of 244 posts

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#21
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.

There are some languages, like C++, where the first place to go seeking answers isn't SO.

C++ devs tend to look at http://en.cppreference.com (using an English locale in this example).

To me, it tends to bias the sample towards the subset of developer population using SO, which would not be a representative sample size for a true population sampling in a statistical problem - it would be oversampled in one group to the exclusion of all other groups.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#22
I really do not understand how anyone could judge up which languages are being used at X time during the day or night based on stackoverflow.

I rarely use stackoverflow (like once a few months), how do we factor in the data which we don't have in it? What's the accuracy of the current data? And how can we foem conclusion?

The post should say, "What tags are used to ask questions on stackoverflow at night?" Because, as powerful as they are, SO can't quantitatively decide which languages are used at what time, they don't have the data!! I learned an entire language without ever looking at a SO qn, it was Go language.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#23
post #3

"Learning haskell" is pretty much in the same category as "Write that novel I've been thinking about."

Learning Haskell has been made much easier with Haskell Book[1]. Unlike LYAH, it actually has a ton of exercises and in-depth explanations so you understand the why behind things as you make progress. That said, it requires discipline to read through.

[1] http://haskellbook.com/

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#24
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 ha…

I very rarely use stackoverflow as well. Last time was probably week ago when googling something bash related. AMA

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#26
post #13

I wish there was one of these correlating gender (actual gender) of the author of the question and language.

Luckily, there is (still?) enough privacy on the net that you can't generally determine such private pieces of information unless the user provides it themselves.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

I very rarely use stackoverflow as well. Last time was probably week ago when googling something bash related. AMA

Well, let me ask you the same questions:

1. What is your development environment?

2. What you do when there is an issue?

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#28
What language people learn out of own motivation, vs what languages people do for pay.

I'd say based on this graph it, and knowing Haskell myself, that choosing Haskell is still a viable way to attract talent. (that Haskell-spike in the animated chart half through the article is... opportunity I guess)

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#29
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 ha…

It's easy, you use a language so long that you instinctually know what path to go down to find how to fix it. Either that or you take time to understand what's happening in every part of the system, and you pair that with notes, a very good memory, or both. And that gives you a basis to know where to look for errors.

I took the former approach, for five or six years now (probably longer), I've been programming with lua. At some point I hit a stage where I don't have to google errors, since they're either logic errors or syntactic errors. Syntactic errors are easy to track down, since either errors are spat out, or the behavior changes in a predictable way. Hitting this stage in lua has helped me to hit it easily in other languages now as well. In my work I use Erlang, and the only thing that consistently stumps me is the architecture of the things that I deal with (Erlang happens to have fantastic warnings though, and everything else can be dealt with via tests)

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#30
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 ha…

I don't use it all that much at the moment. I've mainly replaced it with various language references that are my first port of call.
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