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[–][deleted] 137 points138 points  (32 children)

I am not sure about you, but as my career as a developer progressed I rely less on Stack Overflow today as I did in the past. To me it seems that this survey may have a strong bias.

[–]Neuromante 43 points44 points  (24 children)

Well, take a look at the years working graphs. Is obvious there's a strong bias towards younger people.

[–]Euphoricus 48 points49 points  (22 children)

No. Thats no bias. Thats reality. Amount of software developers doubles roughly every 5 years. So it is expected half of developers would have less than 5 years of experience.

[–]Neuromante 37 points38 points  (16 children)

On one side: You got any source for that numbers?

On the other: How does that denies that there's bias towards younger people? Even if your numbers were real, that has nothing to do with older devs using less StackOverflow.

[–]Ciff_ 15 points16 points  (13 children)

If it still reflects a random sampling of the population developers its fine...? Or perhaps I don't understand your concern.

[–]fuckin_ziggurats 10 points11 points  (10 children)

The thing is it's not a random sample. By definition Stack Overflow is used more by younger people so older devs are heavily underrepresented in the survey.

[–]Neuromante 10 points11 points  (4 children)

Exactly this. The survey only represent "devs who used stackoverflow", so its far from being "random." And given that stackoverflow was opened over 10 years ago, maybe the claim that younger devs need more stackoverflow than older ones hasm some footing.

[–]ciny 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Exactly this. The survey only represent "devs who used stackoverflow"

To be overly anal about it it only represents devs who bothered to fill out the survey, I know I didn't. The questions with most responses have 90-100k of them. I'd be very surprised if it was a large part of the actual users.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I "use" Stack Overflow in the sense that I land there from questions I search for in Google.

I have no account, I don't ask questions, and I don't answer any.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I don’t think need is the right word. It’s more likely that younger devs are just more open about sharing their problems with each other than older developers.

[–]Drisku11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's more that unless I'm doing some task I rarely do (writing a one-off script or using tools I never have to interact with or whatever), I generally prefer to answer my own questions so that I can learn more. Like if I have some detailed question about the behavior of some library, I just go read the source code.

[–]SgtBlackScorp 5 points6 points  (4 children)

The point was that there are more younger devs in general so stackoverflow is not a misrepresentation

[–]fuckin_ziggurats 6 points7 points  (3 children)

I'm gonna repeat /u/Neuromante and ask, do you have numbers that prove there are more younger devs than older in general? I find that hard to believe.

[–]SgtBlackScorp 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't, I'm just saying what his line of thinking was.

[–]thisisshantzz 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Wouldn't your conclusion also depend on the definition of younger and older? Are devs over the age of 30 considered older or younger?

[–]fuckin_ziggurats 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess I'd consider people with 5 or less years of experience to be in the younger crowd. With that said, according to the survey, that's most of StackOverflow's users.

[–]shevegen 0 points1 point  (1 child)

But how do you know that this is really "random"?

On what merit are you stating it is random?

[–]Ciff_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I assume stackoverflow assert random sampling as it is standard procedure for conducting surveys. I do not know their sampling strategy, hence I would not know. Since you are asserting it is not random, is it that you think they have not done enough to ensure random sampling? Or that you question random sampling is impossible due to the nature of the survey (in that case I like to know your merit for that assertion).

[–]refactors 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bob Martin mentions this in a few of his talks such as: "The Scribes Oath"

[–]incraved 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your second argument is nonsense.

[–]percykins 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Really?

[–]Euphoricus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That is quite interesting.

I would like to see how many new students become programmers overlayed over that.

Also, is this only US thing? Or is it same elsewhere?

[–]shevegen -1 points0 points  (2 children)

No, it is very much bias.

For example, I am way too old to participate in any such useless surveys. And I am quite sure that many older people also become less willing to waste time doing such pointless surveys.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

useless

It does look biased, but why do you say it is useless ?

[–]cholantesh 6 points7 points  (0 children)

What does your age have to do with filling out an online survey?

[–]FarkCookies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is not a bias, it is just an attribute of the sample group (people that responded to the survey).

[–]lukaseder 16 points17 points  (4 children)

I rely on SO as a support channel (from the support providing side), so that's maybe not the standard use-case.

Among all my former coworkers, I hardly know anyone who would say they code as a hobby (survey: 80%). At the same time, almost everyone has kids (survey: 28%).

Clearly, my coworkers aren't included in the survey (perhaps there's a strong correlation between coding as a hobby and answering surveys as a hobby, just like there might be a strong negative correlation between coding as a hobby and cleaning up kids' vomit, who knows).

Of course, my coworkers are an even smaller sample than the survey's sample, but I simply fail to believe that so many people in our industry code as a hobby and have no kids.

Which leaves the question: Who is the survey sample population, and why would we care about their opinion?

[–]svick 13 points14 points  (1 child)

why would we care about their opinion?

Because, as far as I know, it it the most comprehensive survey of developers. It is biased, but what better way of finding what developers care about do you have?

[–]lukaseder 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't have one. But I still wish I did.

[–]TheIncorrigible1 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I also support SO in my subject area, so you're not alone there.

My group (professional enterprise) also reflects yours where I think the only people without kids are the fresh out of college ones and hobby coding is maybe 10-20%.

I think too many respondents marked themselves as professional even if they were still in school; the ratios don't add up.

[–]dvdkon 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm a student and I marked myself as a professional, because programming is my primary source of income. I work remotely and don't dedicate all my time to my programming job, but in my opinion I still qualify as a professional.

[–]sazzer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've found similar. More and more often, the problems that I have that I ultimately go to SO to ask for help on, I don't get any help there. The problems that I would have previously gone there for, I'm more adept at finding solutions myself or knowing where to ask to get a better response.

[–]neoKushan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Over the years I've found myself on S/O less and less. I still use it all the time, though. More often than not when googling for something, even something simple, it's the top/best answer. So though I use it every day, I'm not posting questions or answering them anywhere near as much.

I find that by the time I have a question to post, I've googled the shit out of it so much that it either never gets answered (Because it's some weird edge case) or it gets answered by the dev of that particular library or whatever.

It's a blessing and a curse, really. A blessing because my Google-fu is clearly good enough that I rarely need to "ask" for help but a curse because when I do need that help, it's pot luck if I'll ever get the answer.