138

This might be totally useless, but I wanted to join the league of people who use the Google chart API and the data dump to create pretty pictures.

So I took a look at the relative sizes of the "communities" on the site, i.e. the numbers of users who are active in certain tags, and also how much the communities overlap. A user is considered a member of a tag's community if they have at least three questions or answers in the tag. Quality (i.e. post scores) doesn't count; this is solely about the number of users.

Examples:

what's with pyqt? the center is where the flame wars start so, what exactly is the performance of a secure sql-server? this is from the April datadump -- there'll be more unicorns in May

Thoughts? Any three-combinations you'd like to see?

"The three C's" as per Koper's request and the three ancients for Pollyanna:

it's just a letter yep, it's not a lot

You can see additional graphs as requested by other users below. Note that this is several years old (and I have long stopped updating this).

Improve this question
22
  • 4
    The three C's: [C#, c++, c]
    – Andreas Bonini
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 12:17
  • Cobol, fortran, and lisp, please.
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 13:38
  • 22
    How about C# vs. Java and Objective C?
    – alex
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 14:00
  • 22
    Not a single person knows fortran lisp and cobol?!
    – Sam Becker
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 15:58
  • 3
    No single user has submitted an answer in all three tags. Given the rarity of such questions, I suspect it's more an issue of timing when they are around rather than no user exists on SO that couldn't answer all three. However, you can fix this - go answer one of each of the questions, and ask him to re-run his graph on the next data dump...
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 17:10
  • @Pollyanna: It has to be at least three, which proves your point even more so. There's some overlap when I decrease the threshold to 1.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 17:14
  • No one with good ideas for SU or SF?
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 17:22
  • @balpha - Ah, yes, I forgot about the minimum of three. Hmm, ideas for SU and SF...
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 21:11
  • 1
    I agree, Objective-C would be nice to see in the same graph as the Three Big C's. (Can the script not do 4?) It would be humbling, kind of like stepping into the Ultimate Perspective Vortex... ;-)
    – Quinn Taylor
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 22:59
  • very cool, any chance you could either release the source or put it up on app engine or something?
    – cobbal
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 0:35
  • ASP, JSP, PHP.... Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer
    – scunliffe
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 4:25
  • @Quinn: The script will do 4 without a problem, but the google chart API won't.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 9:42
  • @cobbal re source: There's no black magic involved; I just query the stuff from the data dump as described. I could put it somewhere, but you'll probably be faster writing it yourself than reading my code ;) I'll see what I'll do. Re app engine: See my comment on Adrian's answer meta.stackexchange.com/questions/36683
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 9:46
  • 1
    "@Quinn: The script will do 4 without a problem, but the google chart API won't." I b believe it goes deeper than that: that generally you can only do N+1 sets in a N dimensional representation. Have to think about it.
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Feb 4, 2010 at 22:20
  • 3
    @dmckee: Even deeper than that. In general, you can do more, but only if you use other shapes than circles (see the canonical en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram for example pictures). Staying with circles, you can actually only do two in general. Look at chart.apis.google.com/… -- every adult is either male or female, but this is impossible to show with circles. Google does its best, but for these corner cases, it has to fail.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Feb 5, 2010 at 6:45

41 Answers 41

Reset to default
1
2
14

That's great!

Here's one for:

  • Django
  • Ruby on Rails
  • ASP.NET MVC

probably looks a lot like the ruby-python-c# graph

Improve this answer
0
14

Here's one for:

  • subjective
  • not-programming-related
  • fun

Just so we can see if the same bunch of people is responsible for all the screwing around. ;)

alt text

Improve this answer
2
  • 9
    note that all funny non-programmers are also subjective
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 17:39
  • 4
    not-programming-related is often slapped on posts when users don't know to flag/vote to close; I wish it could be banned.
    – Ether
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 18:39
12

Scripting languages.... fight!

perl vs python vs ruby

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
2
  • Add shell, then.
    – Daniel C. Sobral
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 0:58
  • 8
    Wow, never shall the powershell and applescript groups meet.
    – C. Ross
    Commented Jan 26, 2010 at 21:16
11

For alex:

alt text

Improve this answer
2
  • 2
    Thanks! The objective c community is larger than expected. I wonder if the iPhone has anything to do with it.
    – alex
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 14:32
  • I like that I (should be) in a very tiny sliver of this Venn -- the Obj-C/C# overlap. :)
    – John Rudy
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 14:35
11

PHP Javascript and HTML Anyone?

I bet it will just be a single circle :)

Well … almost:

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
1
  • 4
    More like CSS JS HTML
    – marcgg
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 15:43
10

SF:

Windows, Linux, Macosx

Apache, IIS

MySQL, Oracle, SQL-Server

DNS, IIS, PHP

alt text alt text

SU:

Windows, Linux, OSX

Harddrive, video, ram

Monitor, Multiple-monitors, remote-desktop

Firefox, google-chrome, ie

OSX, USB, PDF

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
0
10

The JVM languages:

  1. Java
  2. Scala
  3. Clojure
  4. Groovy

Limiting to three is hard. Leave Java out, I guess.

Then the following, perhaps with either Java or the biggest community from above.

  1. JRuby
  2. Jython

Finally, the following two, with either Clojure or Scala.

  1. Haskell
  2. Erlang

alt text alt text alt text

Improve this answer
0
8

Cool.

How about RIA technologies?

Silverlight vs Flash vs Air

alt text

Improve this answer
8

Here's a few I found interesting:

alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text

Improve this answer
7

Is it possible to do a "starts with" on these?

If so, to clarify a slice in alex's request, I'd like to see an [objective-c]/[iphone-*]/[cocoa] breakout.

Your wish is my command:

it's all about that iThingadongdong

Improve this answer
2
  • 2
    So objective c would be almost absent on SO without iPhone?
    – alex
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 15:39
  • 1
    @alex - Not necessarily, but almost all people knowing objective c are concerned about iphone, according to the protocol here and this graph
    – Gnoupi
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 15:46
7

My third and probably last request :P

jquery and javascript

I threw in IE to have a third one:

alt text

Improve this answer
7

Very cool. How about...

  1. security & cryptography & C# (for size comparison)
  2. WPF & silverlight & Winforms

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
5
  • got a third one for WPF? Google only does 3-part venn diagrams.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 16:56
  • 1
    @balpha - winforms?
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 16:58
  • 3
    I find it interesting that so many people in crypto are also in C#. I would have expected a much lower percentage.
    – Tom Ritter
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 17:10
  • Interesting that wpf appears to be as popular as winforms.
    – Joel Coehoorn
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 23:02
  • 1
    Well, "popular" is a bit misleading here. It's more about Questions asked. I'm making an unjustified, general, non-scientific, subjective statement: The popularity/usage of WinForms is much much higher, but WPF being such a different technology requires relatively much more questions than the rather straight forward WinForms.
    – Michael Stum
    Commented Jan 24, 2010 at 6:22
7

haskell lisp f#

C++ Java C#

:-)

thanks man!

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
7

[Apple] vs. [Google] vs. [Microsoft]

alt text alt text alt text

Improve this answer
4
  • On what site?``
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 9:32
  • Okay, I did all three. But note that those aren't good community size measuring tags.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 10:31
  • Wow... no intersection...
    – Daniel C. Sobral
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 15:54
  • 4
    @Daniel - small sample size.
    – Michael Petrotta
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 22:12
5

Great idea!

C#, ASP.NET, WinForms

alt text

Improve this answer
2
  • interesting that more than half the winforms questions also involve asp.net
    – Joel Coehoorn
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 23:03
  • 2
    These are users active in the different tags, not questions in multiple tags. This shows us that many people who are active in the winforms tag are also active in the asp.net tag.
    – Chris Lieb
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 23:20
5

how about:

.NET, Mono, ASP.NET

.NET, VB.NET, C#

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
1
  • I was waiting to see one with c# and vb.net.
    – Bratch
    Commented Feb 12, 2010 at 0:42
5

ASP/ASP.NET vs PHP

alt text

Improve this answer
1
  • I didn't expect it to be bigger. Is that representative, or just the general MS bias as both Joel and Jeff use MS languages, I wonder?
    – Macha
    Commented Feb 13, 2010 at 22:36
5

How about databases/platforms

C#|VB.NET|.NET, Sql Server, Oracle

Java, Oracle, Sql Server

C++, Oracle, Sql Server

C#, Java, Sql Server

C#, Java, Oracle

PHP, Oracle, MySQL

(I think C# should be C# or VB.NET or .NET, I don't know about java)

MySQl, Oracle, Sql Server (on stackoverflow, as a control for the above)

Sorry for the color mixup, but with all those wishes, it was pretty hard to keep a consistent ordering:

alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text alt text

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    That's a neat idea! The last one (for SF, though) is already done, see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/36590/…
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 18:17
  • @balpha I was thinking of it for stack overflow
    – Ian Ringrose
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 18:19
  • thanks, so mysql goes with php most of the time but java does not seem to go with oracle (not what I was expecting), it looks like more oracle people are using .net than java.
    – Ian Ringrose
    Commented Jan 24, 2010 at 18:41
5

Most popular js libraries (according to tag counts on SO)

  • jQuery
  • Prototype
  • Dojo

redhat flavors (on SF)

  • redhat
  • fedora
  • centos

I was gonna suggest ubuntu variants (kubuntu, xubuntu, etc) but other than ubuntu those tags are pretty scarce.

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
1
  • 3
    There are four (4) users in the intersection of all three JS libraries, including cletus and Mister "The <center> cannot hold" bobince.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 24, 2010 at 9:41
4

I'd quite like to see the overlap of users between the sites - who's active on SO, SF & SU (and meta?) generally, not in particular tags. Given that over all of recorded history this might be quite large, perhaps restrict it to the last week/month/quarter.

Improve this answer
3
  • The data dump doesn't include account associations, so there's no good way to cross-reference users between sites. Meta isn't in the data dump at all.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 13:54
  • Sounds like Stu needs an update: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18737/… @bal
    – random
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 14:40
  • This is what I thought the question was about when I read the title...
    – DisgruntledGoat
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 21:47
4

How about Android, iPhone, Windows-Mobile

alt text

Improve this answer
4

Windows automation languages (on Stack Overflow and Server Fault):

  • PowerShell
  • VBScript
  • Batch

Note: If you notices discrepancies regarding the numbers for previously posted graphs and these ones, that's because these two are the first graphs based on the February 2010 data dump.

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
3

Seriously, it doesn't look like it would be very hard to write a small web utility that let people put in their own choice of 2+ tags and have this auto-generated, instead of having this flood of requests. Show me the link to the data dump and I'll do it.

This could be a lot of fun and an interesting new use for SO.

EDIT: Ah, found it. I'll see what I can whip up :) Any other suggestions for types of charts that people would want?

Improve this answer
3
  • No, it's probably not very hard. I just didn't feel like optimizing for a web-app kind of situation (You'll either have a lot of preprocessing, or restrict the requests to certain tags, or be too slow for real-time response).
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 9:21
  • Also, I didn't expect Jeff to tweet this -- It pushed the number of requests quite a bit. twitter.com/codinghorror/status/8087621756
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 9:55
  • Where did you find it?
    – Albert
    Commented Nov 20, 2010 at 16:31
3

I'd love to see Apache, nginx, lighttpd. Thanks.

alt text

Improve this answer
1
  • How about add IIS?
    – abatishchev
    Commented Sep 28, 2010 at 10:14
3

I'd like to follow up this with a comparison relative to Java. So, picking Java, the largest jvm language (apparently), and the smallest jvm language (of those I listed):

  1. Java
  2. Scala
  3. jRuby

It almost makes you feel sorry:

alt text

Improve this answer
0
2

Since I'm curious about the relative community sizes:

  • matlab
  • java
  • .net

alt text

Improve this answer
2

How about some size/overlap comparisons of managed languages on JVM and .NET?

For the JVM, how about: java, scala, clojure, rhino, jruby, jython.

For .NET: c#, f#, ironpython, powershell, boo, nemerle.

(I ask rather greedily, as it'd be cool to put in my slides when talking about Scala next month.)

alt text alt text

Improve this answer
2
  • I suggested something similar. But Groovy must appear in any JVM language comparison.
    – Daniel C. Sobral
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 0:58
  • see Daniel's answer for more JVM stuff: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/36590/… Also, c# is too big and nemerle is too small in relationship to the other .net ones.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 10:24
2

Can you do ORs?

css || html || javascript || web-development plus c || c++

alt text

Improve this answer
3
  • Not yet, maybe later. I still need a third one, though.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 22, 2010 at 17:06
  • How about java || .net for the third one?
    – Macha
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 13:01
  • Note that a user who has exactly one post in each of [css], [html], and [javascript] tags, has three posts in the combined tag soup and is thus considered part of the community.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 17:16
2

As someone in the unfortunate position of programming in ColdFusion, I'd like to see these tags compared:

  • coldfusion
  • php
  • asp

alt text

Improve this answer
2
  • There you go (or did you mean asp.net?)
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 25, 2010 at 15:53
  • @balpha: not sure really, i was just throwing out a third option. php and coldfusion are the only webapp environments i use. thanks!
    – Kip
    Commented Jan 25, 2010 at 18:58
2

Game development related:

  • game-development
  • opengl
  • directx

alt text

Improve this answer
1
  • Thanks! Well, I'm surprised they're not more inclusive of game-dev.
    – MPelletier
    Commented Apr 13, 2010 at 13:36
1
2

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .