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2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

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Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#131

Post by hunter23 »

burlesona wrote: post #66
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 asked about why Python but it has a lot to do with JS too. But first lets compare against Python: Ruby is a delightful language, but it's dominated by one niche (web development) and one framework (Rails). Over the last 10-20 years Python has become the main teaching language in Academia. This has greatly contributed to it's ecosystem for math and science, which in turn has contributed to its rise in Data Science…

Yes, one of the biggest drawbacks in the Ruby world is the lack of strong libraries outside of web dev. Python has scrapy, numpy, pandas, nltk, beautifulsoup, matplotlib, etc. Basically if you want to do almost anything (except high performance real time stuff) you can do it in python. it is an excellent general purpose language.

In ruby, the world isn't so great. When I was in the ruby world, I would always hit roadblocks on my side projects. There were so many times where I wanted to do something not web dev related and I couldn't find a popular and well supported ruby package. For example, I wanted to do text analysis of some sites I scraped and python's nltk was perfect (but there wasn't a perfect ruby library).

The ruby world needs to expand beyond web dev if it wants to grow.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#132

Post by MrTonyD »

jedberg wrote: post #120

> Do Developers Need to Become Managers to Make More Money? 50% said no. I think this is naive. We've had this discussion on HN before. Companies pay lip service to the idea that they have parallel tracks for management and engineering, but the reality of it is that it takes far more success to move up the engineering ladder. You can be one of the very best engineers in your company, or one of many hundreds of senior…

Another aspect is autonomy. It is routine in most companies for a low level incompetent manager to be able to waste all the time and talent of a senior engineer. So the issue is more than just money.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#133

Post by Pfhreak »

stothrow wrote: post #126
Pfhreak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, this is a HIGHLY abbreviated overview that I'm sure other LGBTQ+ folks would say doesn't get it exactly right: If we decouple the idea of gender (societal expectations for men/women -- e.g. boys like blue, girls like pink. Boys wear shorts, girls wear skirts.) from the idea of sexual/genetic characteristics, then we can start to discuss what it means to be a man vs what it means to be male. Manliness and feminini…

Thanks for sharing your experience, it sounds like it's much harder than I'd think (as a cis hetero man) to be non-binary. This might be wildly off-topic, but if you wouldn't mind answering, I have a question about workplace bathroom policing. Last week I was leaving the men's bathroom at work and saw someone walking in, who very much looked to me to be a woman. I had a split second to think about if I should say som…

I'd say most cis folks will pretty instantly recognize when they've accidentally entered the wrong restroom and make a hasty (if somewhat embarrassed) retreat. I generally assume most people are headed to the right spot or will very, very quickly figure out when they've made a mistake.

That feeling of, "Oh shit, I don't belong here", btw, is basically what I feel using either gendered restroom. Thankfully, most tech companies try to provide some gender neutral restrooms.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#134

Post by UnFleshedOne »

Pfhreak wrote: post #101
mmmeff wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what does this have to do with software development?

Great question. It's more of a workplace concern, as I'm sure that nonbinary folks experience these issues in other workplaces. However, software development is definitely a male dominated environment and there's a lot of discussion in the industry about how we make that environment more inviting to women. So there's a shared experience there of being a gender minority within software, but also the difference that so…

Men and women have different insurance risks.

I expect it will take a while for insurance companies to build up risk profiles for new pronouns once those stop changing. They will want to know your biological sex and whether you are in or after transition into one of them. Depending on whatever effects social genders might have they will want to know those as well. And as a third separate item they will want to know your preferred pronouns for communication purposes.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#135

Post by PascLeRasc »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #80
atonse wrote: post #47

Kudos to the Visual Studio Code team for all its success. VS Code and TypeScript, are kinds of technologies and tools that just win entirely on their strong merit, in spite the image of who has created them. .NET Core is getting up there too. MS has always been a developer friendly company but they are definitely earning mindshare back from non .NET developers.

Microsoft seems to be killing it lately.

They're killing usability, [1] user control [2] and eBooks [3], I'll give you that.

Soon they'll even be killing innocent civilians. [4]

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-new-study-shows-hom...

[2] https://www.ghacks.net/2018/09/12/microsoft-intercepting-fir...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367

[4] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/02/nadella-microsoft-wi...

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#136

Post by anderspitman »

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 a saying I'm fond of that goes something like, "Python isn't the best language for anything, but it's the second best language for almost everything."

But if I had to pick one thing to point at to explain its rising popularity, it would be data science, as others have mentioned. I wonder if Travis had any idea the impact he would have when he made numpy.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#137

Post by b3b0p »

Regarding the most dreaded languages, 3 (C, Objective-C, Assembly) of the top 4 probably my favorites actually. I find working with and developing in C (Objective-C in iOS/macOS) and doing assembly the most fun I have had and look forward to. Maybe it's because right now I only do it for hobby.

What makes it the most dreaded? My only guess is having to maintain legacy code that's hard to understand or poorly written or another valid reason. I'd love to get into an embedded C / assembly role. I got pulled into web development early on, but I had a friend who was stubborn and held out and ended up coding games for casinos in C/C++ in Linux and SDL. I'm so jealous.

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#138

Post by PascLeRasc »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #91

Can someone explain why rust is so beloved? Also I work in R primarily, I find it funny that love and dread are both near 50%.

Others have answered about the performance, and it is incredibly efficient. But for me it's the community - /r/rust and discussions on here about Rust have always been pretty friendly and understanding, which hasn't been my experience with other programming language fans (looking at you, C++).

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#139

Post by [deleted] »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #89
Pfhreak wrote: post #54

I'm a non-binary manager who was formerly a non-binary engineer. I use singular they. I've had people go out of their way to make my professional life more challenging or insulting. But it makes me happy to see nonbinary/nonconforming identities addressed in this survey. Our experience of the tech world is very different, and it's great to see some acknowledgment of that.

What is non binary? I haven't heard that before. Can you share some experiences?

[deleted]

Re: 2019 Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results

#140

Post by fj39dkf »

ChrisRR wrote: post #58

As with every year, take these result with a massive pinch of salt. The results are heavily weighted by students and young developers who are way more likely to chase the latest trends and buzzwords

The survey provides specific numbers on this, no need for the pinch of salt: 41% of respondents have fewer than 5 years of professional experience, and 68% have fewer than 10.

A better question is whether or not this experience distribution is representative of all software engineers. It almost certainly isn't, because it's only surveying "people who respond to stack overflow surveys", but it's hard to know how different it is.

All that said, there is no need for the quip about trends and buzzwords. Of course younger developers are more interested in new technologies - they have a whole future career they need to plan for. One might just as easily and meanly say that old developers refuse to learn new things because they're just going to retire in 10 years.

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