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DZone > Web Dev Zone > Most People Would Use PHP But Be Embarassed To Admit Even Knowing It (?!)

Most People Would Use PHP But Be Embarassed To Admit Even Knowing It (?!)

John Esposito user avatar by
John Esposito
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Dec. 05, 11 · Web Dev Zone · Interview
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Hammerprinciple.com is a really fascinating site: high-dimensional representations of people's opinions and use of various things:

  • programming languages
  • databases
  • browsers
  • version control systems

and on a slightly different note:

  • martial arts
  • gin

(Although gin can be nasty. But that depends on several factors, and in any case gin quality is probably less important than suitability for a particular mixed drink...actually I can't verify either of the two things I just said, but hammerprinciple.com knows.)

For this post, though, let's look a what people had to say about PHP -- a complex language to characterize, to be sure, and polarizing, although perhaps only due to its huge success.

High-dimensional representations capture real opinions much more accurately (real things aren't bundles of few-dimensional properties), but quickly become unwieldy. The key is finding the right balance between the fine-grainedness offered by a higher number of dimensions, on the one hand, and the quantitative tractability offered by fewer dimensions, on the other.

The surveys on hammerprinciple.com found this balance rather well, I think, and displays some pretty cool results -- out of a sample size over 5700, at the moment, which I suppose is meaningfully large (for a websurvey).

One result is the title of this post: many developers would use PHP for a web project, but would be embarassed to admit that they know the language at all. (Ha, that's almost like being human.)

Since the results are constantly changing, here's a snapshot as of right now:

I like the #1 'Ranked Low' item. (No I don't, PHP did improve my ability as a programmer!)

Drill down for more PHP results, or check out the sweet hammerprinciple homepage for more interesting high-dimensional community analysis. 

PHP

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