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Programming Python Stats

Stack Overflow Reveals Which Programming Languages Are Most Used At Night (stackoverflow.blog) 99

Stack Overflow data scientist David Robinson recently calculated when people visit the popular programming question-and-answer site, but then also calculated whether those results differed by programming language. Quoting his results:
  • "C# programmers start and stop their day earlier, and tend to use the language less in the evenings. This might be because C# is often used at finance and enterprise software companies, which often start earlier and have rigid schedules."
  • "C programmers start the day a bit later, keep using the language in the evening, and stay up the longest. This suggests C may be particularly popular among hobbyist programmers who code during their free time (or perhaps among summer school students doing homework)."
  • "Python and Javascript are somewhere in between: Python and Javascript developers start and end the day a little later than C# users, and are a little less likely than C programmers to work in the evening."

The site also released an interactive app which lets users see how the results for other languages compared to C#, JavaScript, Python, and C, though of those four, "C# would count as the 'most nine-to-five,' and C as the least."

And they've also calculated the technologies used most between 9 to 5 (which "include many Microsoft technologies, such as SQL Server, Excel, VBA, and Internet Explorer, as well as technologies like SVN and Oracle that are frequently used at enterprise software companies.") Meanwhile, the technologies most often used outside the 9-5 workday "include web frameworks like Firebase, Meteor, and Express, as well as graphics libraries like OpenGL and Unity. The functional language Haskell is the tag most visited outside of the workday; only half of its visits happen between 9 and 5."


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Stack Overflow Reveals Which Programming Languages Are Most Used At Night

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  • Or maybe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @12:41PM (#54283209)

    "C programmers start the day a bit later, keep using the language in the evening, and stay up the longest. This suggests C may be particularly popular among hobbyist programmers who code during their free time (or perhaps among summer school students doing homework)."

    They're spending more time to get the same amount of work done.

  • So... If you want to earn money coding, learn C#?

    • Not really, if they threw in Java, it would be a lot higher. If you look at some of the later graphs, Java is higher in both quadrants. As well, they had to remove it off one graph because it would have squished the rest further to the the left and down. I use C++, php, java, and C#, and some C, and for most enterprise workhorse applications, I am in the Java world.
  • And a resounding one at that.

  • Look at the graphs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @12:59PM (#54283307) Homepage

    Just look at the graphs. It is almost possible that these "numbers" are within statistical error. Every single language I've looked at using their graph has the EXACT same trend line, with only a very subtle variation of up/down by a fraction of a percentage.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Look at Haskell; It clearly stands out. For the other language I must agree with your conclusion, though.

    • Just look at the graphs.

      No.

    • by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @01:47PM (#54283521)

      Just look at the graphs. It is almost possible that these "numbers" are within statistical error. Every single language I've looked at using their graph has the EXACT same trend line, with only a very subtle variation of up/down by a fraction of a percentage.

      Close, but unless they they did smoothing I suspect the effect is statistically significant, there really is a bigger drop-off for C#

      Interestingly Linux has a bigger day vs night drop-off than C.

      • If you ask a C# programmer what language he uses when he programs for fun at home, he will say, "I don't program for fun." It won't be C#.

        (The above of course is a generalization, and if you happen to be a C# programmer who programs in C# for fun, I don't understand you, but I don't judge you either).
        • by murdocj ( 543661 )

          I'm a c# programmer and when I program for fun at home, I use the most convenient language. Which automatically eliminates Perl, but then there are still a lot of choices.

    • Yes, but this is not really statistics. The author took the entire population, and made a graph out of it. Since not even a single user was left out, it is impossible for errors to creep in because of sampling problems. Therefor all results are significant.

      now it sort of becomes statistics when we try to infer things from these graphs, but then the problem is are SL users representative of general programmers, not that the results non-significant.

  • RUST RUST RUST
    Rewrite everything in RUST
    Or else!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    ... for intelligent discussions about pros and cons of programming languages. At least, not anymore.

  • by AndroSyn ( 89960 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @01:34PM (#54283457) Homepage

    Once you get your head around crap like triple pointers, function pointers and all of the other head bashing elements of C, your brain is just..screwed. C is such a masochistic language that you REALLY must be in love with it to persist. Normal people just go FU and move on to something with more hand holding, not that there is anything wrong with that. So this is why C programmers stay up late, they simply cannot help themselves :(

       

    • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @02:03PM (#54283591) Homepage Journal

      I love it when people perceive C has difficult or archaic or obsolete, because that's job security for me. C is in some ways a high level somewhat portable macro assembler, and it gets some real work done. It's a 45 year old programming language designed for writing a kernel, that we've adapted for hundreds of other purposes. It's not perfect, but luckily you don't have to be perfect to be useful.

    • I started with BASIC, then Assembly, then C. Coming from Assembly, C pointers were absolutely trivial. Once you understand why C pointers exist, which Assembly requires you to understand rather early on, then all levels of C pointer indirection are extremely easy to grasp.

  • All the plots look the same. May be if they had plotted emacs vs vi may be the curves will fight with one another....
  • by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Saturday April 22, 2017 @02:12PM (#54283637) Homepage Journal

    You think C is late-night?
    Add the keyword 'assembly'. It only drops off after midnight, leaves the rest in the dirt in the evening hours and falls way behind the curve during the day.

  • Lambda: the Ultimate Central Nervous System Stimulant

  • Somebody explain time zones to this guy please.
  • It would appear that nobody in their right mind would code in C# unless they were getting paid for it.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. - Oscar Wilde

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