Re: [RFC] Git User's Survey 2008

On Thu, 24 July 2008, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:49:41PM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:

quoted

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008, Dmitry Potapov wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 03:25:03AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:

quoted

   02. What is your preferred non-programming language?
  (or) What is the language you want computer communicate with you?

IMHO, the later wording of the question is much better.

First just satisfies demographic curiosity.  Second is more question
about internationalization (i18n).

I think demographic is largely covered by the first question about
country. As to i18n, I don't think it is fully covered just by the
question about one's language preference to communicate with computer
(which is probably is more correctly to call localization). Possible
questions related to i18n are:
- Do you use file names with non-ASCII characters?
- Do you use text files with non-ASCII characters?
- Do you (or members of your team) use computers with different
  character sets and have to deal with non-ASCII characters?

But I guess we do not want to have so many questions. So, maybe
something simple instead:
- Are you satisfied with support for non-ASCII characters in Git?

But only if it is free-form question:

   xx. Are you satisfied with support for non-ASCII characters in Git?
       Yes or No?  If no, please explain what you had problems with.
       (free form, or rather Yes/No + explanation for No)

If we decide to add more questions about translating Git, I think
we should also add the following:

   xx. Which parts of Git would you like/do you need translated?
       (zero or more: multiple choice)
    -  git-gui, gitk, manpages, user's manual, commands messages

quoted

Should "What version do you use now?" be multiple choice (using git
on more than one machine / operating system)?

I think we already have another question about what OS one uses.
So I believe it should be only version number here.

One can use Git on many different machines (for example at work, and
at home), or on multi-boot machine (with more than one operating
system).  Each of those machines, and/or each of those operating
systems can use different version of Git.  So that is why I think
this should be multiple choice, even if I guess that most people
would select only one answer.

quoted

What should be possible
choices for "How long do you use git?"?  Perhaps.

      10. How long do you use git?
          (single choice)
       -  never/few days/few weeks/month/few months/year/few years/
          from beginning/I wrote it(*)
       +  (*) just kidding ;-)

I would rather use numbers like that:

never
less than month
1-3 months
3-6 months
6-12 months
1-2 year
more than 2 years
from the beginning

I think it is even better; I'm not sure if we shouldn't split sub-month
region, for example to provide for people who has heard of git for
first time, but played with it a little bit.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland