from Hacker News

Stack Overflow survey is too often misinterpreted

by mmilano on 7/6/18, 9:19 AM with 4 comments

The "Most Popular Technologies" section of the Stack Overflow survey is often interpreted wrong due to missing context. It does a great disservice to the industry because of how respected the survey is.

I've been directed to it twice in the last week by 2 different people interpreting the same information in different ways... and both wrong.

They need to segment their technology survey better because non-technical folk are getting ideas like JavaScript is surpassing everything else without consideration for the underlying application of the technology. I mention the JavaScript conclusion as just one example.

Let's narrow the context down to web applications for a specific example.

Comparing PHP to JavaScript might be the best example. (based on the only server-side stats I could quickly find) According to stats, PHP is the most prevalent server-side language in use for web applications, yet it ranks in popularity on Stack Overflow at 30% compared to JavaScript at 69%.

Of course JS is ranked higher because it is used as a client-side language on just about every website, in addition to whatever server-side language is being used.

As a result, we get people concluding and spreading disinformation that languages like Python, Java, PHP, etc.. are antiquated because of JavaScript's rising popularity.

The survey is just a popularity contest. It is also misunderstood in that it highlights the shiny things developers prefer to be developing with without any prying for the tried and true mundane tech that companies may use for the sake of stability and maintainability.

Stack Overflow needs to at least segment the language survey into application types, such as server-side web, client-side web, native mobile, desktop, etc. Until then, this popularity contest is useless and does a disservice to the industry due to its popularity and easily misinterpreted data.

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#technology

  • by DoritoChef on 7/6/18, 2:47 PM

    I think the best takeaways from the SO survey come from year-over-year analyses. You can watch JS explode in popularity over time, and see how quickly languages and libraries get adopted.

    It would also be really nice if the "popularity" metrics that OP mentions (i.e. preferred language, least preferred language, language most used at work, etc.) could easily be grouped by "Developer Type". After some quick googling, it has become apparent that the data from previous years is available to download, but it would be nice for SO to show that data in the blog post.

  • by m3tr0s on 7/7/18, 9:09 AM

    JS is used on client and server-side, in mobile and desktop application development, and for IoT/embedded systems also. 69% vs 30% might be accurate. Which one is more popular as a server-side tool only is an interesting question though. Consider the number of packages on npm vs composer for example.

  • by pepper_sauce on 7/6/18, 1:19 PM

    JavaScript is surpassing everything. The world is a cold, dark place.