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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID 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: "Marin D. Condic" Subject: Re: Embedded Systems Survey Date: 2000/04/27 Message-ID: <39086C48.14A4707F@quadruscorp.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 616339820 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <390746A1.740C9D08@averstar.com> <3907DD01.4D0B9987@quadruscorp.com> <2000Apr27.075813.1@eisner> Organization: Quadrus Corporation X-Sender: "Marin D. Condic" (Unverified) X-Server-Date: 27 Apr 2000 13:37:37 GMT Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-04-27T13:37:37+00:00 List-Id: Larry Kilgallen wrote: > 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. > This might skew your results as well. What if there is a high correlation between "Ada Programmer Mentality" and "Always Lie On Surveys" mentality? :-) > If it were not language advocacy, but something else, like > preferred toothpaste, would _you_ answer ? > Depends. Does it make me get on a mailing list or something? Is the *government* behind it trying to get even *more* information about me so they can better control every aspect of my life? > Giving people money for answering skews the results. > I've had a little statistics training, so I'm confident that an experiment could be conducted which would get a reasonably fair answer. The problem is more one of the mechanics of it. A survey on the web is inexpensive but suspect from the start for obvious reasons. A magazine or direct mail survey has problems of cost, sample set and responses. (Do Ada programmers read the same magazines as C++ or Java programmers? Is one group more likely to respond than the other?) I suppose if you could identify a random set of embedded system programmers and called them with a two question survey (Which language do you use on your current project? Which language would you prefer to use?) you might get a meaningful result. But where would you get your list? Or the money to do all the calling? > > 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. Maybe. People tend to be pretty honest about what they prefer. The problem is getting an honest survey. MDC -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic - Quadrus Corporation - http://www.quadruscorp.com/ Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ q u a d r u s c o r p . c o m Visit my web site at: http://www.mcondic.com/ "I'd trade it all for just a little more" -- Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10] ======================================================================