From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID,
	REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,76f19a5f656fa576
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)
Subject: Re: Embedded Systems Survey
Date: 2000/04/27
Message-ID: <2000Apr27.075813.1@eisner>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 616312939
References: <390746A1.740C9D08@averstar.com>
 <3907DD01.4D0B9987@quadruscorp.com>
X-Trace: news.decus.org 956836696 3754 KILGALLEN [216.44.122.34]
Organization: LJK Software
Reply-To: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 2000-04-27T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <3907DD01.4D0B9987@quadruscorp.com>, "Marin D. Condic" <mcondic-nospam@quadruscorp.com> writes:

> You think there may be some way of getting an honest answer to the
> question of how many developers prefer Ada for a given problem domain?

First you have to enumerate "all developers" for that problem domain.

Then you decide on a sampling algorithm and ask away.

The "no response" and the "none-of-your-business" samples will
affect your "margin of error", as does the "always lie on surveys"
mentality.

If it were not language advocacy, but something else, like
preferred toothpaste, would _you_ answer ?

Giving people money for answering skews the results.

> You think there may be some way of getting an honest answer to the
> question of how many developers prefer Ada for a given problem domain?

No.