Raul posted:
> http://me.veekun.com/blog/2013/01/15/a-new-use-for-stackoverflow/
> shows where people new to a language or other context are struggling.
Neat! Thanks.
To summarize that blog post: a quick and relatively reliable way to get a
sense of the world's perception of your programming language is to look at
the top 10 questions asked about it (on the popular programming site
StackOverflow).
He works through several examples. Here's the one on the Python programming
language:
The first three [questions] ask about how to use generators,
metaclasses,
and decorators -probably Python's three neatest metaprogrammingish
features.
Number 4 asks about running Python on Android, a common question
that
hints at Python's popularity as a dynamic Java alternative.
Number 5 is about the equivalent of enum, which is a pretty common
question (and garnered 35 answers, wow) about how to structure
your program.
6, 7, and 8 are about checking for a file's existence, becoming an
expert in Python, and running an external command. Seems there are
people who jumped to Python from shell scripting, and want to know
how
to use it more seriously.
9 is about the ternary operator, which was new at the time (and
which is unusual enough that most newcomers don't know it's there).
10 is, um, Peak detection in a 2D array. Clearly some people are
doing some cool number crunching and visualization with Python.
So what can we take from this?
+ New Python developers are interesting in becoming proficient;
+ Python has some novel features that developers are interested in
understanding;
+ Python appeals to sysadmins, app developers, and scientific
computing.
Sounds pretty accurate to me.
The list of J questions can be found at [1]. Here are the first ten:
1. command line input for J
I am trying to read command line input following this link ...
2. bode plot in J (right half plane zero, second order)
While working on Exercise 6.5 of Ch06 in Dr. Middlebrook's ...
3. Is a train in J associative
In programming language J, is a train of verbs always
associative? If so ...
4. Open boxes with a custom padding value in J
Unboxing or opening boxes with different sizes causes padding
...
5. Read input from line in J
I am very new to J (learning it for fun) and I am trying to
read data from keyboard ...
6. J Programming Beginners Loop
Could someone kindly explain the control structure in J ...
7. J (Tacit) Sieve Of Eratosthenes
I'm looking for a J code to do the following. Suppose I have a
list ...
8. How Do Ranks Work?
The best way for me to understand J is emulating the
interpreter...
9. Unique pairs of unequal arrays in J
Suppose two arrays of different sizes: N0 =: i. 50 N1 =: i. 500
...
10. The running sequential average of a list of numbers in J
I'm trying to generate the Sierpinski triangle (chaos game
version) in J ...
Anyone care to interpret?
-Dan
[1] Questions tagged "J" on SO:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/j
Note the original author's caveat to this method of interpretation, however:
These questions [on my pet project] have far fewer upvotes than
the top questions
for PHP or Python, which makes them less likely to be statistically
significant.
Note also that there is discussion on J in SO which is not necessarily
tagged as such, [2]
[2] "J programming Language vs R Programming Language vs Incanter"
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1427276/j-programming-language-vs-r-progr
amming-language-vs-incanter
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
