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

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."

Comments

Or maybe

[tomhath]

"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.

Look at the graphs

[darkain]

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.

Re:Look at the graphs

[quantaman]

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.

Re:Look at the graphs

[phantomfive]

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).

Re:Incoherrent Measure

[Sperbels]

Are you saying professional programmers never need help? I've been a professional for 20 years, and coding for 30 years. I still find stack overflow extremely useful. I don't understand the hate.

C coders are brain damaged

[AndroSyn]

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 :(

   

Re:C coders are brain damaged

[OrangeTide]

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.

Assembly

[SharpFang]

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.

Re:9to5

[techno_dan]

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.