Changes in client-side programming languages surveys

Posted by Sam Soltano on 16 June 2011 in News, Client-side Languages

We used to show both usage data and market share data in our client-side programming languages surveys.

We found that the surveys benefit from dropping the market share data for two reasons:

First, JavaScript had a "market share" of almost 100%. That means that almost all the sites that used any client-side programming language, also used JavaScript. The consequence of that was, that the market share values in the various reports were the same as the usage data, just 10% higher (JavaScript us used by 90% of the sites). Therefore, that value gave little extra information, and was just a source of confusion.

Second, some of the reports, such as the Ranking Breakdown report were based on market share data. Since this was always near 100% for JavaScript, one could not see the differences in the various ranking groups. In the new form of the report (the current form), we see that JavaScript is used more by high-traffic sites compared to average sites (96.9% vs. 89.5%), whereas Flash is used less (25.8% vs. 27.3%). That was not so clearly visible before.

It is rare, that leaving out data makes a survey better, but we think that is the case here.

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Please note, that all trends and figures mentioned in that article are valid at the time of writing. Our surveys are updated frequently, and these trends and figures are likely to change over time.

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