2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results • Hacker News Board

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#31

Post by itronitron » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

if it makes you feel any better, many of the YC companies are looking for devs with Rails experience

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#32

Post by tomca32 » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

I also don't understand this. Even today, Rails is, by far, the most productive environment that exists for developing a web application. I speak this as someone who also wrote a ton of backends in Node.js, Java, and many other languages (never tried Django though, so I don't know about that). Almost all of those applications would have been 10% of the effort if they were just Rails apps.

A sibling comment here mentioned that Rails' power came from other gems, but that's not really true. Rails is still actively developed, and just Rails, by itself, gives you more functionality out of the box than whole 1000+package Node stacks.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#33

Post by andy_adams » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #23

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

There's nothing rising about it, Django been around and very popular for years. Python is just a great confluence of all of the things that other languages lack, and the Python language is adapting to include more and more of the things people actually want. I don't think the Ruby language has been nearly as responsive (some would even say that Python has been too responsive, and certain language features are going t…

One of the main findings of the SO survey was that Python is indeed rising, overtaking other languages as one of the most popular and desired, so although it was popular in the past, it's definitely rising.

Most everything else you said could also be said of Ruby - docs, helpful community, flexibility from scripting up to massive webapps. That's what perplexes me - what are the "more of the things people actually want" specifically that drive Python's growth?

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#34

Post by Pfhreak » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #26

"Men are more likely to say that being tasked with non-development work is a problem for them, while gender minority respondents are more likely to say that toxic work environments are a problem." Interesting. Isn't the former a subset of the latter?

non-development work is a subset of toxic work environments?

No. I don't think so. Depends on how you identify development work. Is documentation, test-writing, requirements gathering, planning, backlog grooming, educating, or advocating considered non-development work? (I think all that stuff pretty clearly falls under the purview of 'developer', but I've gotten a lot of feedback from folks over the years who think it's not.)

Toxic work environment can include things like sexual harassment, micro and macro aggressions, offensive language (I had a manager for a while who called his reports 'motherfuckers), etc. I wouldn't normally consider non-development work to be 'toxic' in the same way I'd consider, say, working with someone who consistently talks down to women and minorities.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#35

Post by nunodonato » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

tomca32 wrote: post #32

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

I also don't understand this. Even today, Rails is, by far, the most productive environment that exists for developing a web application. I speak this as someone who also wrote a ton of backends in Node.js, Java, and many other languages (never tried Django though, so I don't know about that). Almost all of those applications would have been 10% of the effort if they were just Rails apps. A sibling comment here menti…

In what way is it better than other frameworks, like Laravel?

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#36

Post by andy_adams » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #19

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

I have no hard evidence, but from a business perspective I have figured that one of the main appeals of Python is the combination of simple and strict that defines the community. Some languages ( cough Perl cough ) are practically art, and that frequently translates to a steep learning curve for new developers to a project, which in turn means cost to the business. Bringing on a new developer to a Python team feels l…

Given that students are probably learning Python in university, I could see this being a strong reason for its growth. I hadn't thought of the "manager" angle - it makes sense that it's easier to plug a new developer into a Python codebase than it is a Rails codebase.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#37

Post by Allower » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #17

> "almost 70% of respondents say they are above average while less than 10% think they are below average. This is statistically unlikely with a sample of over 70,000 developers who answered this question, to put it mildly." Not at all. It's a self selecting survey, the people who choose to answer are likely more confident in their abilities than those that don't, and, contrary to common understanding, it is perfectly…

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Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#38

Post by sidlls » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #26

"Men are more likely to say that being tasked with non-development work is a problem for them, while gender minority respondents are more likely to say that toxic work environments are a problem." Interesting. Isn't the former a subset of the latter?

No. Software development for any non-trivial project requires more than just slapping a few requirements down on paper and then flinging code into an editor.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#39

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

strictnein wrote: post #17

> "almost 70% of respondents say they are above average while less than 10% think they are below average. This is statistically unlikely with a sample of over 70,000 developers who answered this question, to put it mildly." Not at all. It's a self selecting survey, the people who choose to answer are likely more confident in their abilities than those that don't, and, contrary to common understanding, it is perfectly…

> Average != median

Unless given an explicit definition, the word "average" has been abused to an extent that it's currently meaningless.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#40

Post by andy_adams » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

0xFACEFEED wrote: post #27

andy_adams wrote: post #3

Can someone help this old (2^5 years) developer out? I've worked with a number of programming languages over the years, and have never found a combination that brings me such joy and productivity as Ruby and Rails. However, I've always felt that Python and Ruby were very similar in style & goal. Can someone who is experienced in both Rails & Django explain why Python & Django are trending up so quickly, while Ruby &…

You're probably going to get a lot of responses with "this is why rails is bad" and "this is why django is good". Though having worked extensively on both and not having a particular love for either, the simple answer is this (IMO): Python skills transfer to other industry disciplines far better. Picking Django (vs Rails) is just a good career move. Data scientists use Python heavily (scipy, numpy). Many universities…

Heck, I'm looking at this survey and wondering if I should put Python on my learning queue. It does seem to be in use across a lot of disciplines, including some of the most popular emerging techs.