Re: [MacPerl] Perl Usage Survey -[veering OT]

["Jay Bedsole" <rwdd30@email.sps.mot.com>]

Rich wrote:

> After several days of voting, 1176 individuals have responded.
> The MacPerl community is still on the chart, but we need a few
> more of you to vote, lest we get swamped by the ravening Unix
> and Windows hordes!

I think this was pointed out before (sorry for being redundant),
but maybe not quite explicitly... I think that the more people
that take the survey, the farther behind MacPerl will fall, even
if everyone that uses MacPerl takes the survey...

 There are several factors at play here:

  (1) The survey is trying to measure the popularity of perl
      in general, not the popularity of perl on any specific
      platform.

  (2) Like it or not, there are a lot more unix users than Mac
      users and a lot more PC users than probably all other types
      of users combined...

  (3) The survey asks for **ALL** the platforms you've programmed
      in perl on. Most MacPerl users probably started programming
      perl on another platform so for every MacPerl vote you
      get a counter vote for another platform.

Before I get flamed, I know I'm generalizing here, but since this
is a statistical phenomenon, I think that should be OK. I'm sure
there are a few users that have only ever used MacPerl, but I know
I've used perl on 4 platforms and I'm probably not alone. So my
premise is probably too conservative, if anything.


The bottom line is don't expect the survey to reflect either the
popularity or the customer satisfaction level of MacPerl. Having
said all that, though, I agree with you, in principle. most
people are going to interpret the results and infer some sort of
popularity ranking, so the higher MacPerl comes out in the end,
the higher it's "perceived" quality will be.

I do think there is a positive inference that can be made from
this data, though I doubt that everyone would pick up on it.
Unix is where perl began; unix users tend to be more technical
than your average user, so you would expect there to be a higher
number of unix perl users than other platforms. What I wouldn't
expect, if you had asked me to predict, is that within this
sample size (1176 respondents), nearly a quarter of them have
used perl in a Mac OS. Another interesting footnote, Windows
users (who probably outnumber Mac users 50 to 1) have only twice
as many votes as the Mac OS... this tells me that the average
Mac user is more likely to be a technical person than the average
windows user... actually, I can't say I'm that surprised. <WINK>

jay

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