Re: J usage estimates

[Tracy Harms-3]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:10 AM, Matthew Brand <mtthwbrnd@...> wrote:
> "You can put whatever number you like."
>
> Okay, thanks. I will go with 100 for now. Anybody got a better estimate :-).
>
> "Similarly applications you are using could be written in J or APL
> without your knowledge of what it is witten in."
> I am more interested in how many people are using J to write programs, not
> how many people indirectly come in contact with J.
>

I agree that the desirable number is a tally of people who actually
write J code in the normal course of a day, week, or month.

My estimate of active participants on the J forums and the J wiki is
roughly 50. I suspect that the number of people who are comfortable
relying on J to meet some of their computational needs puts the user
count into the (low?) hundreds. The tally of people who've
familiarized themselves with J to a modest degree lies, I'm guessing,
in the thousands. But, hey, I'm just making these numbers up, like you
are!

--
T
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For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Raul Miller-4]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Tracy Harms <kaleidic@...> wrote:
> My estimate of active participants on the J forums and the J wiki is
> roughly 50. I suspect that the number of people who are comfortable
> relying on J to meet some of their computational needs puts the user
> count into the (low?) hundreds. The tally of people who've
> familiarized themselves with J to a modest degree lies, I'm guessing,
> in the thousands. But, hey, I'm just making these numbers up, like you
> are!

In other contexts, active forum participants have been a few
percent of active users of whatever the forum was about.  And,
personally, I was not active on J mailing lists for a  number of
years (though this was a long time ago, now).

Also, I have seen interesting J work from people I had never heard
of.  (The time when I first heard of  Norm Johnson's Lightwave plugin
stands out in my memory.)

--
Raul
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