Re: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ?

"Consider the source!"

Much of what's popularly reported as "statistical evidence of (fill_in_the_blank)" comes from parties who are NOT disinterested in the results.

With no intention to impugn either of your sources (given my utter lack of familiarity with Dice.com and lack of evidence about the effectiveness, profitability, etc. of job listing sites such that you cited), I would point out that one could infer that a site listing perl jobs might have an interest in showing a growing market. And one need not infer any deliberate skewing (<begin tongue in cheek> while that may sometimes happen in some extraordinary cases <remove tongue from cheek>): sometimes the views of those specifying the data to collect shape the results.

Comment on Re: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ?

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Re^2: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ? by jhourcle (Prior) on Jun 26, 2005 at 04:47 UTC
I did consider the source -- and Dice is a company that is trying to make money. They make money by getting people to pay them for job postings. People pay them for job postings, because people know they exist. (and forget that they had that little backrupcy issue). People know they exist, because they keep getting quoted in the press for releasing these sorts of statistics. Although with the internet, just about any stupid thing will get some mention, controversial things tend to get moved to a location where they can get more attention. I personally don't trust most of the stuff that I read in the news, if it's been summarized to the point where someone has made a decision for me, rather than giving me the information so that I can make the decision for myself. In this particular case, they've selectively pulled out a few numbers, and the only information that we have is that it came from something about 'skills needed': *Please note that data reflects public information posted by dice.com users and customers. For example, 10,545 jobs posted on dice.com as of June 1, 2005 describe Unix as a skill needed for the position advertised. A single job posting may reflect more than one skill, location and type of position (permanent vs. contract); therefore total figures for these attributes may be greater than total jobs posted. However, as anything as a percentage is a ratio, without knowing what the ratio is based on, it's a useless value.	[reply]

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Re^2: Are Perl and the dynamic languages dead or what ?
by jhourcle (Prior) on Jun 26, 2005 at 04:47 UTC

I did consider the source -- and Dice is a company that is trying to make money. They make money by getting people to pay them for job postings. People pay them for job postings, because people know they exist. (and forget that they had that little backrupcy issue). People know they exist, because they keep getting quoted in the press for releasing these sorts of statistics.

Although with the internet, just about any stupid thing will get some mention, controversial things tend to get moved to a location where they can get more attention.

I personally don't trust most of the stuff that I read in the news, if it's been summarized to the point where someone has made a decision for me, rather than giving me the information so that I can make the decision for myself.

In this particular case, they've selectively pulled out a few numbers, and the only information that we have is that it came from something about 'skills needed':

*Please note that data reflects public information posted by dice.com users and customers. For example, 10,545 jobs posted on dice.com as of June 1, 2005 describe Unix as a skill needed for the position advertised. A single job posting may reflect more than one skill, location and type of position (permanent vs. contract); therefore total figures for these attributes may be greater than total jobs posted.

However, as anything as a percentage is a ratio, without knowing what the ratio is based on, it's a useless value.

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