If you take a survey of all professional programers (defined as
those who makes a living primarily by writing code),
what percentage uses emacs?
does anyone know any such survey?
(sorry, posting this also to comp.lang.lisp and comp.lang.scheme)
Xah
···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
Xah Lee wrote:
«If you take a survey of all professional programers (defined as those
who makes a living primarily by writing code), what percentage uses
emacs?»
I've been keeping a eye for such statistics over the past several
years, but i don't think i've ever come across.
My guess is that, emacs in the late 1980s to early 1990s, have a
significant market share, perhaps above 50%, and probably continuously
declined since mid 1990s. Today, my guess is that it's less than 5%.
Xah
···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
Text Editor Trends
Xah Lee, 2007-08
This page shows the popularity of text editors and IDEs. The following
lists them in order of popularity.
1. Microsoft Word↗
2. Microsoft Visual Studio↗
3. emacs↗,vim↗
4. Notepad++↗
5. Xcode↗
6. Textmate↗
7. Eclipse IDE↗
8. Wordpad↗
9. JEdit↗
10. BBEdit↗, Notepad2↗
11. NEdit↗
12. TextEdit↗
Notepad?.
The rank is based on Google Trends↗ This would not be a very accurate
measurement of user base, but gives a rough indication.
I haven't done much research on what IDEs are common on the Windows
platform. (haven't been using Windows for 4 years and never developed
for MS technologies) So if you have some names, please suggest. Other
than that, i think the above list pretty much capture major text
editors used today.
for a html version with links to wikipedia, see
http://xahlee.org/emacs/text_editor_trends.html
Xah
···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
Previously, i posted some data about text editor's market share, based
on google trend.
I've made some corrections and clarifications. I've also added a
section about the importance of this information. I'm pasting the new
section below in hope that tech geekers may be more aware of the
relative importance of various non-technical aspects when in
discussing issues of their languages and tools (such as in their
perpetual and perpetual “vi vs emacs” chant.)
----------------------------------
TEXT EDITORS POPULARITY
This page shows the popularity of programer's text editors and IDEs.
The following lists them in order of popularity as of 2007-08.
...
...
WHO CARES?
Statistics such as the market share of a type of software, is broadly
speaking part of the info and activity of demographics and market
research. Such information is very important in decision making. For
example, a corporation will need to know its market share to make
decisions on marketing budget, development budget, pricing decision,
corporate buyout negotiation, down to the technical details of a
feature design. Good and bad directional decisions can mean success
and extinction. As a example of importance of the info about market
share of editors, consider emacs advocates and Free Software
Foundation (emacs developers), in their consideration of modernization
of Emacs. If emacs is used by majority of professional programers
(defined as those who makes a living primarily by coding), then
perhaps it is not so important to changes emacs to conform to modern
UI. But if emacs is used by very few people, then the modernization of
emacs issue might warrants more weight.
---------
Text Editors Popularity
http://xahlee.org/emacs/text_editor_trends.html
Xah
···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/