Re: help with survey

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Joerg says

<<> 5.  Your chosen language is practical (everyone uses it).
                              ^^^^^^^^^
At least you tell us what you mean by practical. From a logical standpoint
I might say: NO --- whatever language you choose since for sure there are
some people who do not use the chosen language.  ;-> I guess your assumed
answer is 'NO' for all other languages besides C/C++...although there
certainly are a lot of people with a different opinion.
>>


Of course it is not a bit true that "everyone" uses C/C++. The only language
that might vaguely legitimately rate a yes is visual basic.

The trouble with a question like this is that it invites people to answer
from their predjudices rather than from knowledge. FOr example, in our
department, all the faculty "know" that "everyone" uses C++ (but soon
"everyone" will use Java), and "no one" uses Pascal.

The facts: for PC development, 60% is done in Visual Basic, 13% in C/C++
and 5% in Pascal (= at this stage Delphi). These figures come from a
supposedly independent survey that Bill Gates recently quoted. Of course
any such survey is always a bit suspect, but let's just say that it was
not a survey done by random questions to newsgroups on the net (it really
is appalling to see these surveys being done in such an obviously invalid
manner by students all over the place -- you can bet that the results of
these bogus surveys will soon enough become received fact). Bill Gates
was a little surprised at the 5% figure for Delphi (thought it was a bit
high), but the ratio of VB to C++ sounds reasonable (VB is a much preferable
tool for many purposes, and is in some respects a superior language to C++).