Second Survey Complete

Wednesday, January 15, 1997 by Dave Winer.

What a month it's been!

Now that the second developer survey is complete, I feel a sense of closure. Lots of changes in the Mac developer community, captured in numbers.

The final survey report is on the DaveNet website at:

http://www.scripting.com/davenet/surveys/97/jan14/

Be sure to check out the Changes page, the Numbers page and look at the bar chart.

What I see in the numbers 

Developers got a clear message from Apple last week -- they're serious about transitioning to the Rhapsody platform. Many developers are going with them.

Developers are more sure about the Be OS.

The three platforms with positive-shaped curves are Mac, Next and Java.

Developers, for the most part are supporting Windows or not. A small number are unsure about whether they will develop for Windows.

Next time 

I don't want to do another survey for at least a month. This one was trouble. There was a spam attack that started after 7PM, shortening the survey by five hours. Next time we want to have a panel of qualified developers, including small ones and large ones, in-house and corporate developers -- a broadly representative group, but with controlled participation.

This time it was possible to spam the survey, to stuff the ballot-box. It was also easy to weed out the spamming. This wasn't an election, it was an attempt to gather some numbers. I think the survey was successful. But I'm fairly sure that if we do another survey using the current method that we will get meaningless numbers. The spammers have discovered it. Once the box is open, you can't close it.

Back to software 

Over the next few days I'll talk with others, then work on some software, regain some perspective and write some more.

Seeya soon!

Dave Winer