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Ronald Bourret wrote:
> In all fairness, I'm not sure how you would be able to do a random
> survey of IT professionals, since it seems virtually impossible to
> compile a list of them. Thus, it's not that your survey is worthless,
> just that it's not fairly reported.
Microsoft has actually been known to do this on occasion (or hire
companies to do it for them). They call up randomly distributed phone
numbers and ask, "Are there any programmers in the house?". If so, they
go on to ask questions like, "Which programming languages do you use?".
This gives them a pretty good idea of the relative distribution of Java
and C#, for example, at least within the U.S.
However, because most households don't have any programmers, they have
to call a lot more people than a typical presidential survey would to
get decent results. This costs real money. Of course, Microsoft has real
money to spend. Not everyone can afford to do such statistically valid
surveys.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim
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