# Julia got in the "most loved languages" of the StackOverflow Survey

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260>\
**Category:** Offtopic\
**Created:** [August 20, 2020, 10:24am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260 "2020-08-20T10:24:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Henrique\_Becker](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/henrique_becker/32/15443_2.png) [@Henrique\_Becker](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Henrique_Becker)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 1:19pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/22 "2020-08-25T13:19:25Z")

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> [@Tamas\_Papp](#):
>
> > [@ettersi](#):
> >
> > you cannot have a good community without a reasonable number of users (aka popularity)
> 
> I don’t think this is true.

If this is true or not depends on the assumption that the percentage of contributors within the users is a constant or not. In other words, if some communities have significantly more engaged people per user of the technology.

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**Author:** ![kevbonham](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kevbonham/32/216165_2.png) [@kevbonham](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kevbonham)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 2:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/23 "2020-08-25T14:09:46Z")

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> [@ettersi](#):
>
> Another example is the Atom → VS Code move, which as far as I understand happened mainly for social / political / money reasons rather than technical reasons.

I don’t follow, do you mean the move of Microsoft to stop supporting Atom, or the move of Julia IDE effort? The later was driven by the former if I understand correctly, and I don’t think the popularity of julia would have swayed MS one way or the other

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**Author:** ![dmolina](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dmolina/32/5246_2.png) [@dmolina](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dmolina)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 2:49pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/24 "2020-08-25T14:49:03Z")

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Just a nuance. Before to _contribute_ to one ecosystem/community, everyone has been an user.

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**Author:** ![ettersi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ettersi/32/6829_2.png) [@ettersi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ettersi)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 3:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/25 "2020-08-25T15:07:02Z")

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What I meant was that a proper evaluation of a piece of software should take into account both its technical and social aspects. If not, you might look at the Julia plugins for Atom and VS Code, observe that Atom has more features than VS Code (this may no longer be true, but let’s pretend for the sake of argument), and decide to got with Atom even though it is clear that VS Code will overtake Atom in the near future.

Of course, “taking into account social aspects” can take many forms, and I’m not necessarily saying that the StackOverflow survey is a good way to do so. I don’t know enough about that survey to really comment on this. Other ways would be to look at number of contributors on GitHub, number of packages, certain high-profile people contributing to the project, etc.

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**Author:** ![ettersi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ettersi/32/6829_2.png) [@ettersi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ettersi)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 3:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/26 "2020-08-25T15:09:18Z")

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> [@kevbonham](#):
>
> > [@ettersi](#):
> >
> > Another example is the Atom → VS Code move, which as far as I understand happened mainly for social / political / money reasons rather than technical reasons.
> 
> I don’t follow, do you mean the move of Microsoft to stop supporting Atom, or the move of Julia IDE effort?

That was indeed unclear. I updated my post.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 3:15pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/27 "2020-08-25T15:15:03Z")

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Certainly. My point is that contributors are the only thing that _directly_ matters for the viability of an ecosystem around a language.

One can of course make the case that a language should attract users who can then become contributors. This is not disputed, but is only relevant _if_ those users do become contributors. That should be the target, not users _per se_.

These are of course truisms, but it is easy to lose sight of them with surveys like this. Suppose someone tries out Julia and finds that it _is_ a great language, but usually the quickest way to get a feature in libraries is to add it yourself. They don’t want to do this, not even to the smallest extent, so they move on to another language. This is “losing” a user, but should not affect the viability of the project.

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**Author:** ![ChrisRackauckas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chrisrackauckas/32/77_2.png) [@ChrisRackauckas](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ChrisRackauckas)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2020, 3:15pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-got-in-the-most-loved-languages-of-the-stackoverflow-survey/45260/28 "2020-08-25T15:15:53Z")

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> [@dmolina](#):
>
> Just a nuance. Before to _contribute_ to one ecosystem/community, everyone has been an user.

Not necessarily, and not necessarily even close. I know a lot of people who got into SciML development because they are interested in methods, but don’t necessarily use the methods all that often. @YingboMa is a great example! I think most people working in SciML are of this methods type.

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