Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What programming languages are used late at night?

stackoverflow.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 244 posts

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#31

Post by FranOntanaya »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #11
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 ha…

In my case the language's official reference is enough i.e. I know what I'm looking for just need to remember what it looked like. I end in SO sometimes when looking for some discussion on general concepts i.e. advantages of X over Y, but even then it's not always very helpful.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#32

Post by frogfuzion »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #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, a…

The point is that it's interesting to infer trends. This is not the supposed to be the authoritative source for what people are doing during day and night. It's just interesting and you can glean some patterns for sure. Stack overflow is hugely popular and millions of developers use it.

Some people I guess are just so bright that they don't need it. That is not most people.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#33

Post by startupdiscuss »

johndubchak wrote: post #21
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.

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 t…

Well, what kind of things do you look up?

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?

#34

Post by tedmiston »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #11
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 ha…

Really depends on what your work is. In the Python world, good docs are a real priority for many libraries which often answer the common questions. I probably read a relevant SO answer to a problem I'm working on 1 or 2 days a week now but when I first started programming it was much more.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#35

Post by startupdiscuss »

fao_ wrote: post #29
startupdiscuss wrote: post #11

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…

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 l…

Oh yes, when there is nothing to look up, I guess you won't look something up.

But those would not effect the results. Presumably a good C# programmer uses less documentation just as much as a good Haskell programmer.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#36

Post by soheil »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #11
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 ha…

Same here it's a odd to see someone who doesn't use it, they must have A. sufficient time to read books on the language B. have it remembered C. possibly work with a language that doesn't evolve much.

Now that I think about it why isn't there canonical questions/answers from most voted SO questions? Sure top ranked questions and answers usually are very well explained, but I think there could be more done in the way of removing friction by rewriting them so they adhere to some sort of convention/standard and then maybe turn them into structured types like jigsaw puzzle pieces and you'd only need those to program anything.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#37

Post by TorKlingberg »

cies wrote: post #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)

Just be aware that the animation makes it look like everyone is using Haskell in the evening. That's false and caused by normalization. Other languages are still more used.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#38

Post by thepratt »

27182818284 wrote: post #5
empath75 wrote: post #3

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

That was similar to my thinking. I chuckled a bit when I saw so much of what I think folks would consider corporate tool-sets like VBA being used in the day compared to like Haskell (that I've never seen in the professional world but know several people that hack around in it) being written at night. Kind of a fun chart.

The biggest player using Haskell would be Google.

Re: What programming languages are used late at night?

#39

Post by mi100hael »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #11
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 ha…

I use SO somewhat frequently when learning a new language and gaining an understanding of the idioms. However, lately I've been using languages and libraries that I know well so I haven't run into many things that stump me to the point of turning to Google.
Post reply on HN