Subject: Re: Git User's Survey 2009 partial summary, part 2 - from first 10

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:00:00 +0200

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
> The 17/08/09, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> 
> > Git User's Survey 2009 partial summary, part 2 - git difficulty,
> > proficiency, uses, install, OS, editors.
> 
> Thanks for these partial summaries.

You are welcome.  Next summary either around 1 September (3/4 duration),
or after passing number of responses in previous survey; it also depends
when I would have time.

> > 3) Have you found Git easy to learn?
> > 4) Have you found Git easy to use?
> >    (Choice - Single answer)
> > 
> > ================================================
> > Answer            | to learn [%] |   to use [%]
> > ------------------------------------------------
> > Very easy         |          4%  |          9%
> > Easy              |         20%  |         36%
> > Reasonably easy   |         55%  |         45%
> > Hard              |         19%  |          8%
> > Very hard         |          2%  |          1%
> > ------------------------------------------------
> > Total respondents |        2942  |        2959
> > ================================================
> 
> <...>
> 
> > What's interesting is comparing (percentage) results for questions
> > 3. and 4.; how hard is git to learn versus how hard is to use.  It
> > seems like Git is reasonably easy to learn, and reasonably easy to
> > easy to use.  So it looks like Git just have somewhat steep learning
> > curve, and the difficulty to learn pays in being more powerful to
> > use.
> 
> I believe it would be interesting to know who (from the question 6.)
> think what later. We may expect that people of the grade 4 and 5 ("can
> offer advice" and "know it very well") underestimate the difficulty to
> learn Git.

Well, you can do some analysis yourself, using just created filters at
http://www.survs.com/shareResults?survey=2PIMZGU0&rndm=678J66QRA2

For example:

================================================|
                  |    proficiency with Git     |
To learn          |-----------------------------|
                  | any*[%] | 1-3 [%] | 4-5 [%] |
------------------------------------------------|
Very easy         |     4%  |     3%  |     5%  |
Easy              |    20%  |    19%  |    22%  |
Reasonably easy   |    55%  |    55%  |    56%  |
Hard              |    19%  |    20%  |    16%  |
Very hard         |     2%  |     3%  |     1%  |
------------------------------------------------|
Total respondents |   3005  |   1786  |   1212  |
================================================|

Footnote:
^^^^^^^^^
[*] This means no filter, which includes people who didn't answered
    question about proficiency, but answered this one.
 
> Also (and as you said), this "Git's users" survey won't have answers
> from unsatisfied users who left Git. We can't rate the number of users
> who left Git because they found it too much hard to learn.

Here also you have to be careful about the fact that "correlation does
not imply causation" (or, if you prefer Latin version, "cum hoc ergo
propter hoc").  The causation might be both ways: gurus don't find
git hard to learn, or don't remember that it was hard to learn; people
who find git hard to learn do not become git gurus.

-- 
Jakub Narebski

http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSurvey2009