Poll: What percentage of Hacker News users are programmers/hackers?

brianto2010 · on May 17, 2009

> So, I was just curious to know how many HN users were actually hackers/programmers, and how many are more interested int [sic] the business and entrepreneurship side of HN.

In that case, your poll options seem strange. For instance, a hacker can be interested in both coding and entrepreneurship. In this scenario, he or she will vote "I'm a hacker", which doesn't fully represent the person given your choices.

Try this:

  * Interested in hacking/programming
  * Interested in business/entrepreneurship
  * Interested in both
  * Interested in interesting stuff excluded from the list

jmonegro · on May 17, 2009

Thanks, I added the "both" option.

netsp · on May 18, 2009

I think the options are still a little off.

"I'm a.." & "I'm interested in.." are not really the same thing. Also, "I'm a hacker" or "I am more interested in the business and entrepreneurship side of HN," don't really cover all the options. You could be a non programmer interested mostly in programming. Many of the programming related articles here are relatively abstract & do not require an understanding of programming to read.

Another thin. 'Hacker' might not be the right word for your purpose. It implies all sorts of things.

tokenadult · on May 17, 2009

"I was just curious to know how many HN users were actually hackers/programmers, and how many are more interested int the business and entrepreneurship side of HN."

You won't find out by this kind of voluntary response poll. Just sayin'.

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=194473&tsta...

andylei · on May 18, 2009

a poll is a better estimate than just guessing

tokenadult · on May 18, 2009

A poll can be a much worse estimate than just guessing. There is a historical example, which is written up in any good statistics textbook.

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/

http://aurora.wells.edu/~srs/Math151-Fall02/Litdigest.htm

http://www.edcallahan.com/web110/lectures/litdigest.htm

colinplamondon · on May 17, 2009

Turning vision into reality.

At this stage that means hacking away in vim, at later stages it's about business and marketing. Just depends on what needs to get done on a given day.

Sephr · on May 17, 2009

Tip for formatting entries on Hacker News: Use two linebreaks, not a <p/> to start a new paragraph.

Tip for (X)HTML: <p> tags should be closed.

cia_plant · on May 17, 2009

end tag is optional for <p> in HTML 4. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#h-9.3.1

Sephr · on May 17, 2009

Sorry, I meant that it is a best practice to close them anyways because an invalid HTML comment inserted into blog served as XHTML doesn't go.

nostrademons · on May 18, 2009

The blog really ought to validating user input, because there are many things worse than unclosed <p>s that can happen if it doesn't.

Of course, "ought to" and "does" are two different things...