The Story of Data - Latest Comments

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

Ernst Lindenberg — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:38:37 -0000

Me too. It's mostly just x86-64. That's the case even with the newest Open SUSE 12.3 KDE.

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

Ernst Lindenberg — Sat, 25 May 2013 09:37:10 -0000

I have found that most of sites see my Linux Mint OS as just "Ubuntu". And that's not the whole picture. 2 years ago many Android-smartphones were grouped as "Mac" because Safari-browser etc...

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

jgmitzen — Sat, 25 May 2013 02:41:13 -0000

Wikimedia's numbers are inaccurate because most distros don't report specific distro names in their browser ID string. Steam is pointless because officially only Ubuntu is supported.

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

jgmitzen — Sat, 25 May 2013 02:40:09 -0000

The problem is many distros don't report the specific Linux being used, and many derivatives report their parent distro's ID, so this isn't a reliable method.For instance, OpenSUSE just reports Linux x86-64 in my case.

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

Jorge Castro — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:18:35 -0000

I don't get how you say that the author's claims are very questionable and then go on to just make up your own claims.

The author at least laid out his/her methodology.

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

Ruel Smith — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:25:42 -0000

PCLinuxOS? Mageia?

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

Donnie Berkholz — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:04:52 -0000

I'm not sure how to interpret that Wikipedia data since Linux Other is 100x higher than everything but Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is 60x higher than the next distro. I find the former confusing and am somewhat skeptical of the latter disparity. Do you have any idea what Other is supposed to represent?

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

Alberto Garcia — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:43:22 -0000

I doubt it. I'm sure around the hacker/enthusiast community it might be close to what you have postulated, but not against ALL Linux-users.

Take Wikimedia's numbers (http://stats.wikimedia.org/wik.... It's not even close. By doing some rough math it's about ~24 million Ubuntu users to to ~0.7 million Mint users.

EDIT:
Don't forget to look at the Steam numbers. Out of the 2.02% of Linux users, Ubuntu accounts for 1.71% or almost 3/4.
http://www.webupd8.org/2013/03...

Re: Ranking Linux distributions, and the decline of the traditional distros

dontburnmoney — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:26:05 -0000

Perhaps in 2008-2009 some 50% of Linux-users were using Ubuntu. But not now. More likely the Ubuntu slice is 25-35% and Linux Mint really close on it. Those claims of big Arch Linux adoption are very, very questionable. It's too hard for average Linux-user to make it working. Even Fedora is easier.

So most likely Ubuntu and Mint has about 50-60% slice and all the others less than 5% each.

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

Paul D — Sat, 11 May 2013 19:01:51 -0000

I grew up in the Bay Area and worked for statrups, moved 10 years ago to Everytown USA (remember the 2002 dot com bubble) . I agree with your premise entirely. It's all just a matter of perspective.

If you are a brand new greenfield startup in the bubble, you can make choices that allow you to go with the latest and greatest technologies. Those in Everytown have the weight of possibly decades of hardware and software choices to be considered.

As an Everytowner now, I'd love to get to a full DevOps cloud solution, but we have to make choices that are best for the business. Where we can we make the incremental choices, best of breed that will make us more efficient more reliable and provide true business value, we go there at a planned pace. The weight of the past makes it harder.

But while the future is DevOps and the Cloud, I think what the bubble is missing is the reality component that in 10 years they will either not be around (lack of funding, not enough business value) and that DevOps and the Cloud technologies didn't help make them viable, they just provided the smartest and quickest way to market.

I think the business value for DevOps in the bubble or Everytown is the same. To reduce footprint and cost in the short term, stability and scalability in the long term. That's what makes it the right thing to do, not that the bubble is any smarter, they just have more freedom right now.
Check back in a few years and see if they are still at warp speed.

Re: Programming languages ranked by expressiveness

Tela — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:37:31 -0000

Thanks for the article. I liked it :)

“One proxy for [expressiveness of a language] is how many lines of code change in each commit”

Can you tell how the number of changed LOC is calculated? Is it just the number of new lines or is it calculated in some more complex way?

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

Derick Winkworth — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:07:40 -0000

I have ranted about this before. This is absolutely true.

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

Daniel Bryant — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:47:22 -0000

Interesting thoughts, and it's something I also see in the UK, obviously on a more micro scale. Many small companies around London are investing heavily in the new DevOps philosophy, particularly around the "Silicon Roundabout" area which is a haven for tech-focused start-ups.

Although there are many other tech-hubs around the UK (as I'm sure there are all over the US; NYC for example?) it's all too easy to see the pattern mentioned above, especially in the more established IT sectors. When it comes to the Cloud these people talk a good game, but often play very badly.

Having said this, I am generally very encouraged to see these new 'DevOps' approaches emerging. Anyone who is a true practitioner of this philosophy knows and can demonstrate the benefits it will bring to a business. My personal favourites are how DevOps methodologies can enable the implementation of Continuous Delivery, which allow more iterative deployments (agile for Ops?), and how the automation of provisioning/deployments/rollouts can lower the cost of experimentation.

In my opinion it's only a matter of time before these early DevOps adopters spread the good word and this practice becomes mainstream. Just like may other methodologies that came before which were also built on sound and proven principles... TDD and Agile development anyone? Surely only the cool kids do that? ;-)

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

blahism — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:50:28 -0000

The generation today often doesn't realize what the legacy of yesterday was able to accomplish. They don't know of the days when a manufacturing plant used to have 50-100 people working for receivables and payables and how a simple ERP running on an old HP K server brought that down to 4-5 people with less errors, faster service and better workflows. The "wins" they feel that they're winning or innovating with, are the same ones everyone has felt with every prior generation. Nothing today says what we have from yesterday is wrong, i'd just wager they're solving entirely different problems. We used to have HR manage these people we replaced with systems, then we thought process could control the systems and now we're back to realizing people are the key and the same way we manage people with manufacturing WIP can apply to any WIP. Regardless of that WIP being Cobol, SAP, JD Edwards, eBusiness, .Net or Java. And to be completely honest, java and .net are absolutely amazing solutions..

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

blahism — Sun, 05 May 2013 22:44:27 -0000

After interviewing for Amazon, I wouldn't want to work there..

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

la6470 — Sun, 05 May 2013 12:08:10 -0000

Why not automate development itself and make code generation tools as easy and useful msword and leave says admins to develop their own tools instead of forcing puppet crap?

Re: Programming languages ranked by expressiveness

Ben Evans — Sat, 04 May 2013 20:28:44 -0000

http://www.aplusdev.org/ - a GPL language related to APL created by Morgan Stanley

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

Doug K — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:12:29 -0000

The best way to run a Bay Area startup is not necessarily the best way to run a business that has a family of Cobol, SAP, JD Edwards, .NET and Java applications of varying ages. If we had the luxury of throwing them away and starting again, it would be done differently..

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

SleeZee Lyers — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:12:57 -0000

Interviewed with Amazon AWS in the past week and it's frustrating - I am from outside the Bay Area / Seattle center of excellence and want in. Amazon seems to want me in, but acknowledges that with my outside the Bay Area experience, it's difficult to hire me in.

Forever alone

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

blahism — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:56:15 -0000

I'd also argue that on the face the bay area may look good, but deep down inside the gizzards of those companies, they're still running the same pets. There is what makes your business money, and there is what makes your business run. If you're not in the business of making businesses run, well then, don't worry about the pets that come with the territory.. (accounting/hr/finance/compliance/audit/benefits.. yaddy yaddy yadda)

Re: DevOps and cloud: A view from outside the Bay Area bubble

sixty4k — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:59:48 -0000

Some of us in the Bay Area still look like the world outside the Bay.

Re: Programming languages ranked by expressiveness

schiffbruechige — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:57:02 -0000

I liked your post.. but was a little sad about the ending.. first "the presence of Perl and shell supporting the initial assertion that expressiveness has little to do with readability or maintainability. " - what's this based on? Where is the evidence that Perl/Shell are less readable/maintainable.. Then you concluded Python, also based on.. what you prefer.

It's a shame that a post all about data ends with "and I prefer X".

Re: Programming languages ranked by expressiveness

tjholowaychuk — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:20:56 -0000

These results are horribly incorrect IMO

Re: Programming languages ranked by expressiveness

Magiel Bruntink — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:33:01 -0000

Hi Donny, sorry but I still don't really understand how you got at the metrics. Did you, given a language, divide the total LOC added monthly by the total number of commits monthly? Or did you have data on individual commits and aggregated those? Basically the question is: is a data point a month or an individual commit?

Magiel

Re: Programming languages ranked by expressiveness

Donnie Berkholz — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:35:02 -0000

The data I used is aggregated across all projects in each language on a monthly level -- it's just the data behind the graphs at https://www.ohloh.net/language... and I got it directly from them.

But yeah, even via the API you're stuck at a monthly level (at least for activity_facts and size_facts).