A Perl demographic survey is now open. From perlsurvey.org:
Take part in the 2007 Perl Survey!
The Perl Survey is an attempt to capture a picture of the Perl community in all its diversity. No matter what sort of Perl programmer you are, we’d love to hear from you.
The survey can be found at: http://perlsurvey.org
It only takes about 5 minutes to complete.
The survey will be open until September 30th, 2007. After that, we’ll be reporting on the results and making the data freely available.
Please feel free to forward this email to any other Perl programmers you know.
Thanks for your help!
Yours,
Kirrily “Skud” Robert
The Perl Survey
info@perlsurvey.org
Software communities can often be an echo chamber where people only hear from like-minded people. The Perl Survey is an attempt to break out of that echo chamber and hear from all Perl users around the world, regardless of skill level, not just the core users most active in vocal communities.
So you cordially invited to complete the survey if you use Perl at all.
You’ll need a valid e-mail address to complete the signup process. If you’re sensitive to the exposure of the data provided in the survey, don’t forget to read the Privacy Policy.
I know the survey has already reached varied places such as Australia (Kirrily’s home), China, Netherlands, Brazil, North America. In about a day and a half, a thousand responses were collected. And is still propagating through the networks of Perl developers and other IT professionals (like Linux users, sysadmins, etc.) Some of the information (like salary ranges) can be quite hard to find in terms of world coverage, which makes a good chance to understand the situation of Perl users everywhere.
It is a pity that the survey is not available in other languages but English. In my case, I would love to have a more accurate view of the usage of Perl in Brazil. I believe that, though people do not admit often, the language intimidates in many non-English-speaking countries and may hurt overall participation. But I may be wrong.
Adriano,
Getting the questions translated is on my to-do list for this week :) I'm not set up for full i18n but I'm hoping I can provide translations to go alongside.
This year's survey was done in a rush -- I only started on the idea when Schwern mentioned his Perl Demographics lightning talk about a week beforehand -- but I want to repeat the experience annually, if possible, so next year I should have more time for that sort of thing.
K.