Stack Overflow Reveals Results From 'Largest Developer Survey Ever Conducted' (stackoverflow.com)

More than 64,000 developers from 213 countries participated in this year's annual survey by Stack Overflow -- the largest number ever -- giving a glimpse into the collective psyche of programmers around the world. An anonymous reader quotes their announcement: A majority of developers -- 56.5% -- said they were underpaid. Developers who work in government and non-profits feel the most underpaid, while those who work in finance feel the most overpaid... While only 13.1% of developers are actively looking for a job, 75.2% of developers are interested in hearing about new job opportunities...

When asked what they valued most when considering a new job, 53.3% of respondents said remote options were a top priority. 65% of developers reported working remotely at least one day a month, and 11.1% say they're full-time remote or almost all the time. Also, the highest job satisfaction ratings came from developers who work remotely full-time.
62.5% of the respondents reported using JavaScript, while 51.2% reported SQL, with 39.7% using Java and 34.1% using C# -- but for the #5 slot, "the use of Python [32.0%] overtook PHP [28.1%] for the first time in five years." Yet as far as which languages developers wanted to continue using, "For the second year in a row, Rust was the most loved programming language... Swift, last year's second most popular language, ranked as fourth. For the second year in a row, Visual Basic (for 2017, Visual Basic 6, specifically) ranked as the most dreaded language; 88.3% of developers currently using Visual Basic said they did not want to continue using it."

Comments

Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Those poor programmers using Javascript. What a lousy language.

(If anyone wants to know why, I will pick one feature out of many. Say you wrote a large program in Javascript, which is happening more often these days. Then you want to refactor by renaming a variable. In Java or C or C# you can refactor by using an IDE automatically, and if somehow you miss an instance, it will be caught at compile time. In Perl or Objective C or Smalltalk, it will caught at runtime in the worst case. But in Javascript, it might not be caught even at runtime, and instead will just cause strange behavior).

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the guys working with BASIC are doing much better than the guys doing Javascript.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

?
It's immediately cross platform, easy to use, and can run server side, client side, and the database itself with mongo db making it rather a one hit wonder. Plus it's FREE.

I see so much talk about javascript being hated, at the same time. I could never afford one of those ridiculous compilers which would create code I could never share properly with the world except those using specific machines with specific operating systems.

Sir, I implore you to purchase a crowbar and liberate your noggin from your gluteus maximus.

I can reach more people and much more quickly link disparate people together with javascript than I can with any other language.

Also if you right click on a website and open the developer console errors get shown there, you can also copy/paste javascript to JSHINT which will locate errors.

When you say refactor do you mean variable scope? Javascript variables are the way they are so that you can use them on the fly without having to pre-declare each and every variable along with it's type which is a god send not a problem. You perhaps just need to get a better handle on how the scope works, that isn't really a language problem, that's a logic problem with your mind.

We the poor have minds too just like a university educated person. Hell I programmed an entire CRM in javascript over the course of a year which is currently helping an HVAC company run their call center, setup services, keep track of technicians, each member has various roles and logins that result in their own interface (techs don't see what admins see etc). The techs are able to use the system in the feild on the fly via their cell phones since it's really all just a website. This is to say, we are coming for your walled garden of apps and operating systems, we are winning because it makes sense and works well.

Keep flailing your tiny fist of rage, I'll happily scoop your job, and do it better :)

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

(If anyone wants to know why, I will pick one feature out of many. Say you wrote a large program in Javascript, which is happening more often these days. Then you want to refactor by renaming a variable. In Java or C or C# you can refactor by using an IDE automatically, and if somehow you miss an instance, it will be caught at compile time. In Perl or Objective C or Smalltalk, it will caught at runtime in the worst case. But in Javascript, it might not be caught even at runtime, and instead will just cause strange behavior).

That's pretty weak criticism of the language, for two reasons:

- That is more of a tooling problem, not so much of a language problem
- There are multiple Javascript "compilers" who will do static code analysis for you. Google closure does this, for example.

Try constructive criticism, such as:

One thing I did dislike about Javascript is the near total lack of support for multi-threaded execution. The insistence on forcing single-threaded execution leads to sloppy code full of callback chains and callbacks within callbacks (look for pyramid of doom). The only alternative (I know of) is... pretty awful really (web workers). It has too many limitations, and forces your "threaded" code to live in a completely separate context (which defeats the point of having threads in the first place).

I'd like to see first class support for threads in the language.

Re: Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never used an editor like Notepad++, Sublime, Atom, Eclipse,

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you usually don't write large programs in JavaScript but rather in Typescript or some other typed language that compiles to JS.

If you insist on writing something nontrivial in JS, there are facilities in the language that allow for good modularization but as always when using an extremely dynamic language the output quality will boil down to developer discipline.

Re:Using Javascript

[BarbaraHudson]

Javascript variables are the way they are so that you can use them on the fly without having to pre-declare each and every variable along with it's type which is a god send not a problem.

If you think that's not a problem, you're the problem. :-)

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, JavaScript is a hot mess, but if you need to refactor a variable name and it is giving you that much grief I have to wonder what you are doing, how much are you dumping into the global namespace, is there some way you can stop doing that?

I also don't think the use of JavaScript is much by choice, it is what front end developers had to work with to manipulate the DOM and then Google decided to build a non-browser interpreter that opened up a new and horrible landscape for badly trained developers. As a bonus, the high popularity of JavaScript is a good indicator of long term demand for programmers, that code isn't going to rewrite itself.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

When you say refactor do you mean variable scope? Javascript variables are the way they are so that you can use them on the fly without having to pre-declare each and every variable along with it's type which is a god send not a problem. You perhaps just need to get a better handle on how the scope works, that isn't really a language problem, that's a logic problem with your mind.

No, when I say refactor, I mean refactor. I can't imagine the state of mind that would even cause such a confusion. The point is, there might not be any errors, because the usage might be entirely legal

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

That is more of a tooling problem, not so much of a language problem

No, tools cannot be made to fix this problem. For example, say I decide to refactor the variable 'message' to be ' outMessage'. Then in one of my code files, I have this line of code, which I fail to refactor:

obj.message = "I <3 Javascript";

That is perfectly legal, and if I miss a usage of the variable later in the same function, it's impossible to detect without understanding the intent of the code, which no tooling can do. It just gets really tough to write large programs in Javascript.

Of course, you can use Typescript as another commenter pointed out, but then you're not using Javascript anymore, you're using Typescript.

Re: Using Javascript

[cyber-vandal]

LMAO. I shudder to think how awful your code must be.

Re:Using Javascript

[mysidia]

Why don't you just "use strict" for all your code, then?

https://www.w3schools.com/js/j...

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

It doesn't solve the problem mentioned here, and Javascript programmers do that kind of thing all the time, even in major libraries like D3.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

ya dude, maybe you should actually check out the last decade of developments in JS, TypeScript, flow, etc, before you go and pull the fogey on Slashdot old man yells at clouds & babbling about shit you're ignorant of

you sound relevant in the days of Netscape, you sound dimwitted in 2017

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really think declaring variables is a hassle, then.. Well, then just use Javascript. You get what you deserve.

Re:Using Javascript

[Zero__Kelvin]

" I could never afford one of those ridiculous compilers which would create code I could never share properly with the world except those using specific machines with specific operating systems."

If anyone thought, even for a moment, that this person was not serious and not a moron, there is your proof that he is one, the other, or both.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Flow is cool but will not catch the problem mentioned here. If you are using Typescript then you are not using Javascript, you are using Typescript. I don't even understand why that is confusing to you.

Re:Using Javascript

[Zero__Kelvin]

I don't often agree with you, but even though I recognize that YHBT, you are correct. Typing systems are a critical part of any language system, and Javascript fails miserably in that regard. It's like saying in a world where autonomous cars are prevalent "The great thing about this car is that it will allow you to inadvertently drive into a wall at 90 MPH!"

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that Javascript "sucks" just because your IDE sucks at refactoring is not fair criticism of the language.

Plenty of IDEs can already handle this without much of a problem, and as I said, Google closure already does static code analysis which will probably catch any "bad" refactoring you've done.

This problem is mostly solved.

Re:Using Javascript

[Kjella]

obj.message = "I <3 Javascript";

My condolences. Personally I loathe code that messes with variables in far-away objects, if it's a huge program you should call obj.setMessage( "I <3 Javascript" ); I don't know how much time I've wasted trying to track down WTF just did something compared to just setting a breakpoint on or printing a debug line in "setMessage()" to see what's happening from where. Yes, setters and getters are annoying copy-pasta code but it's a wonder for sanity. Same with stored procedures and databases, if something is done from many different places route it through one procedure. Even if it's done wrong, then at least it's done consistently wrong.

Re:Using Javascript

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. When you say "refactor" you mean something else, which wouldn't be such a big issue were it not for the fact that nobody, including yourself, has any idea what you mean when you use the term.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a mode of working where you use JavaScript to write the implementation and TypeScript to describe the interface. In this case, you can in principle get some of the benefits of both worlds, though in practice I'm not convinced it provides enough value to be worth the effort for an internal codebase used by only one small team... better used for third-party JS libraries where the number of beneficiaries is larger.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Schrodinger's moron.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Yeah, actually, requiring setters and getters would be a decent way of working around this particular problem in the language. Good solution. Of course, if you do that, most Javascript programmers will complain and say you are not writing idiomatic Javascript, but that's a problem with the community, not the language.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Plenty of IDEs can already handle this without much of a problem, and as I said, Google closure already does static code analysis which will probably catch any "bad" refactoring you've done.

It's not clear you've understood the problem. The bug is syntactically and semantically correct, so static analysis will not detect it. It's only manifests itself as a behavioral problem. Please try to say something that indicates you understand the issue (if you choose to again reply).

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

In this case, you can in principle get some of the benefits of both worlds,

There is an alternative principle to consider: it could actually give you the worst of both worlds.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop using the term "refactor" to refer to changing a variable name. It makes you look like the moron you are!

Re:Using Javascript

[lucasnate1]

In Haskell and Erlang you can also use variables on the fly without declaring them, and yet they don't allow one to just refer to a non existent variable and have its value automatically replaced with null or empty or undefined or whatever they call it in js land.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

If declared variable types are so critical, why did MS implement a dynamic type in C# 4.0? Sometimes, dynamic types are a "feature", not a "problem". For example prototyping often goes much more quickly with languages that feature dynamic types, and prototyping can be extremely important, however orgs will choose not to prototype when the cost to do so exceeds what they are willing to spend. It's somewhat analogous to drug development, where they spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on idea feasibility to see if something potentially works (prototyping), and then millions to push something through approval and distribution (production build).

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

To factorize a problem means to choose abstraction boundaries (usually in a way most suited to the problem at hand).

Should this assembly of abstraction then later prove bad (it's not most suited to any problem at hand), then you refactor. You choose new abstraction boundaries and new abstractions. Rewriting the existing program to use those new abstractions can and usually is an automated process. The Menu item in your IDE that does that is usually called "Edit -> Refactor...". Check it out.

Phantomfive means a special case of refactoring. Your variable name ended up being wrong (usually too specific because you found a more general case) and you want to rename the variable and fix all its references automatically.

Re: Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Do it better for less. FTFY.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

phantomfive was the one who called it "refactoring" first.

Also you are a moron for suggesting a variable name change is not an aspect of refactoring. Short variable names are often ambiguous, and code might use the same variable for two inconsistent purposes, in which case you need to refactor the code - make superficial changes in the code without altering any functionality - to keep things sane.

Re:Using Javascript

[BarbaraHudson]

Let me turn that around for you - if it's so important, why did MS wait until c# 4.0? Hint - it's not.

Also, maybe we need a bit more rigour, because too much crap that's released is still obviously in the proptotyping stage. "We'll fix it after release" is bs. Used to be that the cost of distributing bug fixes was entirely on the vendor (duplication and mailing of media) so there was a lot more incentive to get it right the first time.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a dynamic type is quite distinct from allowing variables to pop into existence without explicit declarations of any sort. -PCP

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

For example prototyping often goes much more quickly with languages that feature dynamic types

I don't think that's true, but I'm open to data that proves otherwise. Prototyping goes quickly in languages that have good libraries (if I want to prototype a new kind of web server, for example, I might try Golang, because it has good libraries for that kind of thing).

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

> refactor by renaming a variable. In Java or C or C# you can refactor by using an IDE automatically, and if somehow you miss an instance

How would *you* miss an instance, when it's the IDE's job?

Oh, wait, you mean your IDE isn't aware of context, and all it knows about is a big blurb of text known as "your source code"?

Re:Using Javascript

[Antique Geekmeister]

From painful experience: declaring variables on the fly is wonderful to start out when adding features to small projects. It _does_ come back to bite you, hard, when something conflicts when two developers add the same variable in conflicting fashion.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Somehow, of course. Maybe you missed that; I explained.

Re:Using Javascript

[angel'o'sphere]

JavaScript is just an umbrella term for people using TypeScript and/or CoffeeScript or other stuff that gets compiled down do JavaScript.
As a 'concept' JavaScript is nit that bad, but the type conversation rules and the possibility to use undeclared variables is a nightmare.

Re: Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Renaming variables is the problem with java script? Really?

If you can't fit 99% of your functions on a single screen each, you are doing it wrong. Even notepad let's you do ctrlH one at w time to automate it enough.

Re:Using Javascript

[PCM2]

On the other hand, if declared variable types are so nonessential, why did Microsoft invent TypeScript, complete with proper support for refactoring in Visual Studio?

Re:Using Javascript

[PCM2]

Of course, you can use Typescript as another commenter pointed out, but then you're not using Javascript anymore, you're using Typescript.

Not strictly true, since TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript. Unmodified JavaScript code is still perfectly legal TypeScript.

Similarly, other people have advocated using strict coding discipline as a way of writing better JavaScript. Sure you can do certain things in JavaScript, but you just don't ever do those things, including ignoring entire language features completely. This alone wouldn't solve your refactoring problem, though.

Re:Using Javascript

[Aighearach]

...nobody, including yourself, has any idea what you mean when you use the term.

Nonsense, I understood him perfectly. He said "refactor" and he meant "code thrash."

And he's partially right; if you're engaging in code thrash, and think it is called refactoring, then you'll benefit from a language with more hand-holding.

Re: Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

I'm seriously doubting you've ever written a large program.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Similarly, other people have advocated using strict coding discipline as a way of writing better JavaScript. Sure you can do certain things in JavaScript, but you just don't ever do those things, including ignoring entire language features completely.

That's true but important libraries (like D3, for example) use that sort of idiom standard. So unless you're just going to rewrite all your own libraries (which actually isn't entirely unreasonable), you're going to run into that kind of problem.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

They added the 'dynamic' keyword to make it easier to talk to other runtimes, not to use it as a lazy way to avoid using the normal type system.

Re:Using Javascript

[Karlt1]

Easy solution: Use TypeScript

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

TypeScript is in the survey, and came in at #9 in the most commonly used languages. It is, however, #3 in most loved languages.

Re:Using Javascript

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You fail to note one important thing. By the time the code needs refactorization, you would have changed your job three times. So it is not your problem anymore.

The original code you wrote will live on, forcing companies to offer 5$ discounts to anyone willing to install flash so that your old code could continue to run. Other companies will keep using WinXP64 so that they don't have to refactor the old code.

Re: Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

An ad hominem attack. How very n00b of you.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

It's tragic that so many people can agree Javascript is a garbage language you shouldn't use to write non-trivial programs, but that so much effort was put into transpiling alternatives into Javascript rather than replacing it outright.

Re:Using Javascript

[drinkypoo]

Found the problem with your otherwise quite amusing science-fiction story. No companies ever used WinXP64.

Re:Using Javascript

[lucasnate1]

In Erlang this is impossible, In Haskell code is supposed to be small enough so that it doesn't happen.

Re:Using Javascript

[packrat0x]

I have never written a web app in BASIC. Is there a good example to look at ?
This survey is mis-labeled. The title should be "largest web developer survey".

Re:Using Javascript

[Antique Geekmeister]

The risk of "have its value automatically replaced with null or empty or undefined" for on-the-fly variables may be addressed in Erlang. Are you saying that Erlang avoids the risk of _overwriting_ desired data with a separate write to the variable with the same name by a different procedure added by a different developer? Unless all functions are local, or all scoping is local, then I find that quite difficult to believe. It's also quite expensive in system resources when function calls occur.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the proper engineering term that includes renaming variables. What would you suggest?

Re:Using Javascript

[lucasnate1]

In erlang all scoping is local and single assignment. There are special APIs to access global variables and they are very limited. If you try access a local that was not assigned yet, you will get a compilation error. If you try to do it with a global, it depends on the function you are using if i remember correctly, either an exception or null.

Re:Using Javascript

[lucasnate1]

Forgot to say this, but the globals in erlang, unlike the locals, are mutable.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

No, tools cannot be made to fix this problem. For example, say I decide to refactor the variable 'message' to be ' outMessage'. Then in one of my code files, I have this line of code, which I fail to refactor:

Refactoring is done by automated tools that don't make mistakes. Manual search-and-replace is just flailing.

Also, 'use strict' is a thing, since ECMAScript 5 (2009). Apply it religiously, and you will never have a variable appear without declaration.

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree... JavaScript is great for implementing behaviors on web pages, but using it for systems programming is just asking for problems. Also never mind that it's single-threaded... so scalability isn't exactly a strong suit for server-side JavaScript.

And then there's the other bug in the software industry that the rise of dynamic, interpreted languages has turned into the avian bird flu of programming: monkey patching. It was always a terrible idea... and you essentially explained how developers can be implementing monkey patching without even realizing it...

Re:Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you written JavaScript code? Because JavaScript definitely throws an exception for undeclared variables, specifically a ReferenceError, regardless of strict mode. Properties of already defined objects will report undefined, because well they are undefined. Empty doesn't exist, and null is there to indicate you have a defined, yet non-valued property, which solves the "is this an existent property" problem.

Re: Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes more sense. I'm an application developer (have been for 20 years) and didn't catch wind of that survey.

Having said that, I totally agree with the outcomes up until the programming language popularity.

Re: Using Javascript

[Anonymous Coward]

There are ways of having a strict typing system without slowdown. It's all about the IDE.

Delphi has a strict typing system, but it is one of the most productive languages available. This is partly because the structure is so well defined that a hot key can add your variable definition at the level of access you intend it to have. A single key combination is the price to pay to ensure typos don't become bugs.

Re:Using Javascript

[syntotic]

Javascript is lovable! You have to do raw C++ first to feel the effect of having the DOM at hand and the way you bundle code in javascript. It is funny.

Re:Using Javascript

[phantomfive]

Is Javascript your first scripting language or something?

Everyone is underpaid.

[0100010001010011]

Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar.

Also what is a 'developer'? I have a Mechanical Engineering degree and don't Identify with 90% of the stuff that comes up when Slashdot or most places discuss 'developers'. I write code for stuff like Simulink Embedded Coder, Vector CANape, dSpace boxes, etc.

Am I a developer? An engineer?

Re: Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a communist

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[BarbaraHudson]

Better watch it. All those stack overflow knobs are going to hate you. The whole thing stinks of selection bias:

About Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge,and level up their careers.

"I'm going to post on stack overflow and level up my career" said no real developer ever.

Re: Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "YOU'RE" an idiot.

Re: Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a wizard, Harry!

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[Dutch Gun]

Yeah, I've never talked about it in those terms, but we all know bullshit marketing-speak when we see it. On the other hand, I've often said "thank God for Stack Overflow" after finding a quick and informative answer to a technical question I had.

It's an incredibly valuable resource. I often find it useful when I'm first digging into a new language or technology. Nearly every basic or even advanced question I tend to ask has been asked and answered already, and I can just reap the benefits.

But the *real* payoff, in my opinion, is when you find answers to incredibly obscure issues for which you might have to work days or even *weeks* to figure out, and some kind soul who has already gone through that pain shares knowledge for the good of everyone else, even though doing so is even more work for them.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[mysidia]

I would be willing to post solutions/answers on StackOverflow,
If StackOverflow would generate revenue for me based on people viewing or using my solution.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course this then raises the question of what's in it for the people who are actually answering the questions?

I can't speak for anyone but me, but I answer questions on Stack Overflow because I find that effectively communicating how something works requires organizing your thoughts in a way that is of benefit to my own work later, and as I get more seniority also helpful in my ability to explain concepts and ideas to others in my workplace.

In that regard, contributing to Stack Overflow does help me "level up", since it gives me somewhere to practice a skill that is critical to being a senior engineer and to cement my own understanding of concepts.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[Zero__Kelvin]

It sounds like you are an engineer who develops software .. ergo you are an engineer and software developer. What you ARE NOT, from what you have posted, is a Software Engineer. I say this because you said "I write code for ..." not "I design software for."

I am a coder. I am a software developer. I am a Software Engineer. What is the difference? For any system that involves a non-trivial amount of complexity or is not lacking importance competent people design before they code. They document their design. 90% of system development is design. Software is the only industry I know where someone says "I need a car that performs like this" and 90% of the people in the industry say "Sure. I have a a bunch of wrenches and other tools right here. I'll start building it immediately!"

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[Zero__Kelvin]

If you had a solid history on Stack Overflow it would certainly help to be able to point to it. I'm a developer, and I say so, thereby making your "said no developer ever" claim false. Sorry I have to disagree with you. Having agreed to you twice today I was hoping for a trifecta!

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[Zero__Kelvin]

"If StackOverflow would generate revenue for me based on people viewing or using my solution."

I think we would all be OK with that as long as we could all get paid when you offer a "solution" that is stupid and/or wrong. I know I could use the significant income such an agreement term would generate!

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[BarbaraHudson]

I don't think HR even knows what stackoverflow (and certainly not what a stack overflow) is. But seriously, have you really said that you were "going to post on stackoverflow and level up my career" to anyone? It sounds so much like what kids who want to break into coding by being game testers would say.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people make a career out of fixing the incorrect solutions that developers find on StackOverflow. Find a company that outsourced some project to India or Elbonia and get a consulting contract.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[0100010001010011]

For any system that involves a non-trivial amount of complexity or is not lacking importance competent people design before they code. They document their design. 90% of system development is design.

Well, that's because I wouldn't say I "write" Simulink models, but vernacular aside that's exactly how most modeling work is done.

Now we get to get into the 'no true scottsmen' question of if Simulink modeling is coding.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[angel'o'sphere]

You are probably both, engineer as academic title and job title, developer as job title. What is your problem?

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[angel'o'sphere]

I get job offers via my Stackoverflow profile. So I'm quite certain HR does know what stackoverflow.com is.
However it is quite astonishing that the job offers usually have nothing to do with my expertise on SO, last job offer was regarding GWT, I was hailed as an expert. I doubt I answered more than 3 GWT related questions.

Re: Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Elbonian outsources have a track record of being willing to pay for quality?

You are just a shill pushing for other people to work for free.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[BarbaraHudson]

So basically recruiters are just using stackoverflow as yet another source of names to pester, without any actual understanding. Like linkdin.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[angel'o'sphere]

I guess they even pay for it ;)

Re: Everyone is underpaid.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "No true Scotsman" thing only goes so far. We can all agree a fresh steaming pile of shit is not (literally) a Scotsman. Analogously, we can all agree Simulink is not a programming language. As it happens, the analogy is pretty apt.

Re: Everyone is underpaid.

[0100010001010011]

we can all agree Simulink is not a programming language.

Why? Based on the GP we go through at much, if not more, design before we make our control systems.

Every paradigm of programming that goes into written code goes into Simulink modeling.

Re:Everyone is underpaid.

[syntotic]

(*Sigh*) 213 countries? We did not finish introducing Horse in whole areas of the world but we gave Computing for Free to just about anyone. That is a huge fault in the market! Distorting. I do not think looking for natural advantages was so valuable as to distort the market at the expense of innovation and... development. We already had Mathematics to that effect, any talent could have surfaced as mathematician rather than wrap us in just-about-anyone-can-program. Which would have meant real quality and much higher wages and less online clutter, etc. But anyway, our New Theory of the World is to give utter freedom to about anyone then just fend off and see what happens next! Surely those guys are using best methods to crib their survey data and give us discounted ubiased quantities and interpretations, right?

Popular vs. loved

[tomhath]

Rust was the most loved programming language

And yet the use of Rust is down in the noise, didn't even make the chart. Apparently the one guy who's using it really likes it.

Re: Popular vs. loved

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with other, newer languages is that the intersection of C/C++/C#/Java/Javascript is the de facto lingua franca of software development. If you really learn that simple kernel then you can learn the advanced nuances of each one on the fly as needed.

Languages that acknowledge the hegemony of this paradigm have a shot of becoming widespread if they solve some other problem. Syntax is a solved problem.

Re:Popular vs. loved

[Anonymous Coward]

... Apparently the one guy who's using it really likes it.

... the one guy ...

Did you just assume someone's gender?

Someone call the Github police, the Rust community is under attack again!

Re: Popular vs. loved

[Anonymous Coward]

> Syntax is a solved problem.

Using "=" as attribution symbol is wrong. "Creatively" using "==" to mean equality is wrong. "!=" as not equal is also unbelievably obscure -- who would imagine a symbol to utter awe or admiration would mean negation?

No, syntax has been tortured for years and those who want a clear, precise language won't ever accept the status quo.

You killed Pascal; prepare to die!

Re:Popular vs. loved

[thegarbz]

The two points may not be related.

One can love a programming language while not being able to use it for it's current task. e.g. I really like Java* but I need to program assembly on this obscure microcontroller.

*I don't.

Re:Popular vs. loved

[Anonymous Coward]

I was trying to figure out how to put a thread to sleep in Rust. Then someone on Stack Overflow gave me the word:

Rust Never Sleeps!

Go Forth and multiply

[Hognoxious]

Swift, last year's second most popular language, ranked as fourth.

What about Forth? I hope it was fifty-fifth.

Re: Go Forth and multiply

[Anonymous Coward]

Senior citizen here. I got your joke, but I doubt the javascript kids will.

Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of respondents is only a small percentage of the total number of developers/software engineers in the world. People going to Stack Overflow the most often are likely the least experienced and JavaScript tends to be the first language people new to programming jump into, unless they're learning through school (then it's usually Java or C/C++).

I agree that JavaScript has a lot of issues and I hope this JavaScript-everything trend will be dying out soon. Also, if you're considering getting into programming but haven't yet, likely no one reading this on /., I recommend learning Java and C first so you will have a much better idea of how things really work. If you only learn JavaScript and Python, you will have a very cloudy understanding of things and will have to result to Stack Overflow all day since you don't know what you're doing.

Yeah, statically typed languages look overwhelming/verbose and take more time to type and plan out, but they are much easier to read by others and debug. This is important for companies where multiple people are going to be working with the code. Python code often takes the longest to decipher and debug imo since somehow the idea of making code look as cryptic as possible became mainstream in that community, the opposite of best practices in Java where every variable and method is supposed to be well named, so not only do you have to spend time figuring out the type expected, but also what the hell the one character variable and cryptic function names do (or the even more cryptic lambda expressions pass in as arguments). JavaScript code can also be a pain to decipher and debug due to some following similar dumb trends and the type not being explicit.

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[BarbaraHudson]

Yeah, statically typed languages look overwhelming/verbose and take more time to type and plan out

That nasty "planning" - there's no time for it in today's culture, where everything is just thrown together after a few "planning sessions" that are basically verbal diarrhea pushed by "big vision" marketing and bosses who may have had a clue in the past, but don't any more and are flailing about to find some project to justify their jobs, same as almost everyone else chasing the big-money exit strategy dream instead of doing the hard stuff like, you know, planning.

The whole "vision thing" has turned software into the cesspool it is today.

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Zero__Kelvin]

I am agreeing with you AGAIN! There is no way to create software that involves "post-facto planning". Agile could have a place within the software development ecosystem, but you need a vision with an orthogonal view and the time to present/documebnt it coherently, prior to implementation effort, if you want to produce quality software.

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Anonymous Coward]

People going to Stack Overflow the most often are likely the least experienced and JavaScript tends to be the first language people new to programming jump into

That's my main problem with online help. Once your skills reach a certain level, the problems which stops you tend to be so advanced that the people reading questions online can't answer, let alone even understand the problem. Stack Overflow is useful for simple code parts, like "how do I read a text file and store the lines in an array, which I can then loop?". Once you know the language you work with, you don't need to ask such questions anymore.

Having said that, Stack Overflow can occasionally be useful for non-basic questions, particularly if it's about how to use a specific API correctly.

Also, if you're considering getting into programming but haven't yet, likely no one reading this on /., I recommend learning Java and C first so you will have a much better idea of how things really work.

I strongly agree and disagree at the same time. You should start with the basics and my experience is that Java sucks when it comes to that. When I started at the university, they had just replaced C with Java for new students, who were to learn how to program. The amount of failing students became record high. Next I ended up with C programming, which if you read the details was actually more C++ programming. The professor was all like "you can do all this clever stuff with class inheritance" and I still really didn't get programming. After that I decided to really go back to basics and picked a C course as an optional course. This course started with hello world and gradually added more and more. Here I finally understood pointers, memory allocation and other stuff, which seems fairly critical to understanding programming. After understanding C properly, going back to C++ was easy. Java on the other hand is still in the gray area for properly understanding what goes on.

One thing I find particularly bad about Java is all the stuff you have to write before getting started, or at least we were told to do so. When you are new to programming, it's not good to have to add namespace, class and stuff like that while being told "it just have to be there. You will understand why later". C can start with main and the explanation is "program execution always starts with main". You can relate to that even on day one. Being forced to add code you don't understand is really harmful to the mindset "I want to understand this". Also teaching that it's ok to add code you don't get and doesn't even try to understand to be a very dangerous one. Once you have learned to do that, when do you stop?

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[BarbaraHudson]

What can I say? Forced early retirement must have mellowed me a bit :-)

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[lgw]

Geez, would you guys just get a room!

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Zero__Kelvin]

I'm really big on getting to know a person before I sleep with them. I know a lot of people think it is weird, but I like to know, for example, if they really exist and if they are a male or female. YMMV of course ;-()

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[lgw]

Well, if you discover the answer to that for Tom "Barbara" Hudson, let us know. :)

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Anonymous Coward]

and if they are a male or female

Statically-gendered individuals are so passe. You're supposed to just pick up random people off the street, try different operations on them, and see what works.

Re: Take the survey with a gain of salt

[nasch]

That just sounds like bad teaching. It's not as though packages and classes in Java are hard to explain.

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah, statically typed languages look overwhelming/verbose and take more time to type and plan out, but they are much easier to read by others and debug."

This is the key problem that amateur developers do not understand - they think because they can get something up and running more quickly that they've found a better language.

But what they don't realise is that what they've lost in getting it up and running quickly is useful information for maintenance and debugging, and in turn their code ends up with classes of bugs that don't even exist in statically typed languages and that can also be hard to track down as they may not exhibit themselves in anything but fringe circumstances, but circumstances that nontheless occur and must be resolved.

In a moderately sized project and larger (> 6 months development time) the cost of dynamic typing always ends up being far higher than static typing over the life of a project.

The fact is that static typing increases overall productivity in moderate to large projects, and greatly improves software quality over applications built with dynamically typed languages in all cases regardless of product size.

Really, when I see people defend languages like PHP and Javascript it's inevitably because all they've ever worked on are short, small projects, so haven't the experience to encounter it's limitations. Alternatively, they've simply never worked with anything else for any worthwhile amount of time to see how utterly deficient Javascript is as a language in comparison.

Re:Take the survey with a gain of salt

[Anonymous Coward]

JDK 9 comes with the jshell tool, which allows you to play around without compiling your code, install an IDE or having a main function, i.e

> cd JDK_HOME/bin
> jshell
| Welcome to JShell -- Version 9
| For an introduction type: /help intro

jshell> for(int i = 0; i 10; i++) System.out.println(i);
0
1
2
3
4

There's worst things than Visual Basic

[Anonymous Coward]

Even tried ExpressionEngine? I have no doubt the parsing engine was made in hell.

Re: There's worst things than Visual Basic

[Anonymous Coward]

Or LabView/Matlab/Simulink/other fake toy languages scientists and engineers invent because programming in a real language is too hard.

Re: There's worst things than Visual Basic

[Anonymous Coward]

I really think that if Excel had been built on APL from the ground up, it would have been a much better platform than having visual basic tacked on at the end. In fact, if I ever get enough time, maybe I will build such a thing.

Real developer survey

[SuperKendall]

I'll believe the results of a developer survey when all they release is the specs for a web API to vote, and you have to manually do the REST call to submit.

Re:Real developer survey

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, no one can post the solution on Stack Overflow. They'll have 3 responses.

Re:Real developer survey

[somenickname]

That's too low a bar to entry. It needs to be a socket that hangs off an IPv6 address that specifies its endianness at connection time and requires your connection to handle obscure return values from socket commands. The server may also, depending on its mood, request the client to speak EBDIC or request that it negotiates microsecond time synchronization before accepting any answers.

Re:Copy-and-paste programmers

[BarbaraHudson]

Don't forget, most of them are on stackoverflow because they want to, as stackoverflow says in their PR puff piece - "level up their careers." Feel free to punch anyone in the face who says that. It's not like you'll cause any real damage.

Most compilers are free

[Anonymous Coward]

Most compilers are free if you don't use Microsoft stuff.
And even MSFT gives away a version of their compiler - think it included application tracking, but that is to be expected from them these days.

I haven't needed to pay for development tools since around 1997. IDEs are for noobs. My entire OS is an IDE.

Perl, python, ruby, C, C++, FORTRAN, Ada, Rust, Pascal, Go, Erlang, lisp are all free. Out of 500+ different languages, only about 30 have paid compilers that people actually use.

OTOH, you couldn't pay me enough to write code in javascript. Well, that isn't true, but nobody would pay that much.

Javascript is the new php. Used by a bunch of noobs who have to re-re-re-learn all the things the 'old guys' learned in the 90s. But most of them won't because they are just happy to have something working and stop there. Screw security. That isn't important.

Being new isn't bad. Being new and arrogant is. It takes decades to earn my level of arrogance and I HAVE EARNED it.

Re: Most compilers are free

[Anonymous Coward]

Csc.exe for C# comes on every windows machine if seen. Most users dont realize this since windows issnt very command line oriented. You want ide that is a different story though.

Re:Most compilers are free

[Captain Ramage]

You do know that the C# compiler comes with the OS, right? Free. The IDE (Visual Studio) is free (Community). You can get the whole Mono thing going, too. So, you were saying?

Re:Most compilers are free

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope they don't try to assert patents on you.

Or from the classic TDWTF

[Ecuador]

Or, from the classic TDWTF: MUMPS.

No, Visual Basic has nothing on such "brilliant" languages, in fact it is much more pleasant than many other languages as well - e.g. COBOL.

Re:Or from the classic TDWTF

[angel'o'sphere]

If I had to chose between VB and COBOL, my choice most certainly would not be VB.
COBOL might be verbose, nut it is a fine programming language/paradigm.

I guess you never used it and have not much clue what magic you can do with PIC().

Re:Or from the classic TDWTF

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to chose between VB and COBOL, my choice most certainly would not be VB.
COBOL might be verbose, nut it is a fine programming language/paradigm.

I guess you never used it and have not much clue what magic you can do with PIC().

In some federal agencies those two languages are the only choices you have. Like choosing between a d-bag and a turd sandwich.

double counting?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 196 countries in the world today. Taiwan is not considered an official country by many, which would bring the count down to 195 countries. Although Taiwan operates as an independent country, many countries (including the U.S.) do not officially recognize it as one.

How Many Countries? - Infoplease
www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0932875.html

Re:double counting?

[phantomfive]

The survey included dependent territories, so presumably American Samoa and Puerto Rico.

213 countires...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that the United Nations recognises 193 countries but this survey includes 213.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001295.html

Agreed: Look @ the demographic there... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistics are only as good as the sampleset & largely, regarding the types of 'coders' there mostly? You're right: Script kiddies cut & paste plagiarists - look @ the tools they use for Pete's sake - prebuilt frameworks or prebuilt libs (flaws galore in them as well)...

* You're absolutely SPOT-ON 110% correct!

(Put it this way - if you sampled NOTHING BUT PHYSICAL WHIMPS (sub 200 lb. benchpress) as your representative set of human physical strength overall? You'd be off... way, Way, WAY OFF!)

APK

P.S.=> Lastly, the fact you were downmoderated for telling it how it REALLY is tells the real story - you hurt a few fake it till you make it creampuff punk's feelings & they effetely, as whimps & weasels do, downmodded you but can't prove you conclusively wrong (for merely exposing them for what they are). Imo, a more REAL sampleset was offered by TIOBE here-> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/10/swift_pops_top_10/ as to what is REALLY going on, from REAL coders (not cut & paste plagiarist script kiddies) - I mean, look @ the PURPOSE of "stack overflow" - giving others ANSWERS instead of them exercising their minds solving problems themselves (for what they OUGHT TO KNOW in the 1st place) - worst part is, these FOOLS think they're "fooling us" (they only fool themselves)... apk

Closed

[Anonymous Coward]

This issues has been closed because somebody asked the same question.

Re:Closed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a "famous question" on stackoverflow that I posted five years ago. It was recently flagged as "possibly a duplicate" with a reference to a question posted two months ago.

Think of the maintainers...

[srichard25]

The people building massive systems in Javascript may not mind it too much, but I sure hope I never end up having to maintain one of these massive Javascript systems. We all know it's difficult to come back later and extend a system, even if you were the one who originally built it. Javascript makes that problem 10x worse. Refactoring Javascript consists of running Find across the entire source and slowly going through the long list of results to see what needs to be changed. Hopefully all the developers used consistent names for the same variable. And finding all the "objects" of a particular type? Good luck with that.

Javascript might be fast to initially build stuff in, but it's an absolute nightmare to extend and maintain over time. 3 years from now most will consider this type of system to be an anti-pattern.

To summarize

[somenickname]

To summarize, a bunch of dime-a-dozen web guys, who rely on stack overflow for every other line of code, have declared that they are underpaid. And, they would prefer to work at home so that if someone asks them a hard question, they can ask it on stack overflow before answering.

Re:To summarize

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just... well.. yea, true. Honestly, I do work from home a few days in a Year. Usually i write about 50 lines, then go fap, then go eat, then abandon the whole thing and wait for tomorrow.

Re:To summarize

[ruir]

Because guys that do work do not post to stackoverflow and live in an alternate reality world, right?
It is because of douchebags like you that slashdot has gone to the gutters.

Re:To summarize

[somenickname]

No one disputes that stack overflow is an invaluable resource for a modern programmer. But, it's also a crutch. And the programmers that lean on that crutch the most seem to be the most represented in this survey.

Re:To summarize

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like bullshit. How do you know?

Re:To summarize

[MooseMiester]

I call it "programming by Google". To see what this looks like in the real world examine just about any WordPress website you find.

Re:To summarize

[Anonymous Coward]

No one disputes that stack overflow is an invaluable resource for a modern programmer. But, it's also a crutch.

So any kind of documentation is a crutch? Does that extend to header files?
What about intellisense? Is that a crutch too?
Geez, what about compilers? Any programmer that doesn't translate his own code into bits is just flat out lazy!

Daya Says Opposite To Me

[Anonymous Coward]

While only 13.1 percent of developers are actively looking for a job, 75.2 percent of developers are interested in hearing about new job opportunities.

Sounds good for developers, doesn't it. Employers, need to make efforts to attract developers, says Stack Overflow.

Let's look at the data from another angle. To me this says that the job market for developers is both limited and highly competitive. More than 75% of the developer pool is looking for work, even if they are already employed. Also, there is a 13% unemployment rate for developers on StackOverflow.

Based on this, it would seem to be a very bad time to be a developer, but a good time for employers to be choosy and cheap.