SPUG: Re: Results of Unix vs Windows Survey

dancerboy dancerboy at strangelight.com
Sat Oct 20 04:35:00 CDT 2001


At 6:24 PM -0700 10/19/01, Richard Anderson wrote:
>C, awk and the shell (sh, ksh, bash) also come installed on most Unices, so
>preinstallation may not completely explain why programmers choose a
>particular language.

I don't quite understand the relevance of this statement. (I bet most 
awk and shell programmers are Unix-only as well... so?)

>   I don't deny that ease of installation and/or
>preinstallation are a factor, but installing Perl on Unix or Windows is not
>usually a big project.

It may not be a big project if you're a sysadmin, and installing 
things is part of your usual job.  Installing *anything* is a 
relatively big project if you're simply a user trying to get things 
done, and would rather not add software installation to your already 
too-large list of things to do.  Many people begin using Perl (or any 
tool) simply because it's there -- something that's much more likely 
to happen when working on a Unix box than in Windows.

An interesting corollary question would be: on what platform did you 
*first* start using Perl?  My guess is that most people start using 
Perl on Unix, and thus most Perl users are Unix users, though they 
may be Windows users as well.  Those who use Windows exclusively are 
less likely to begin using Perl in the first place. (I notice that 
there are no Windows + <non-Unix OS> users in the sample.)

OTOH, have any done statistical tests been done yet to see if the 25% 
vs. 40% difference is actually significant?  My intuitive feeling is 
that with such a small sample size, a 15% difference is probably due 
to chance... but my statistics is a little rusty, and I'm feeling too 
lazy to go look up the correct formulae...

-jason


>
>Richard Anderson
>Software Professional
>Email: starfire at zipcon.net
>
>Webmaster and Board Member
>Seattle Unix Users Group, http://www.seaslug.org
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steve Howell" <showell at zipcon.com>
>To: "Richard Anderson" <starfire at zipcon.net>
>Cc: "Asim Jalis" <asimjalis at yahoo.com>; <spug-list at pm.org>
>Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 5:53 PM
>Subject: Re: SPUG: Re: Results of Unix vs Windows Survey
>
>
>>  Richard Anderson wrote:
>  > >
>  > > After some crude data-mining, I noticed that only 25% of the programmers
>  > > that use Perl on Unix use Perl on some other platform, whereas 40% of
>the
>  > > programmers that use Perl on Windows use Perl on some other platform.
>How
>  > > should this be interpreted?
>  >
>  > Perl comes installed on most Unix boxes.  (Maybe not from sysadmin's
>  > perspective always, but generally from user's perspective.)
>  >
>
>
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