Made Up Statistics

At DjangoCon my good friend Miguel Araujo and I presented on Advanced Django Form Usage. Slide 18 of that talk mentioned some made up statistics. Here they are for reference:

• 91% of Django projects use ModelForms.
• 80% ModelForms require trivial logic.
• 20% ModelForms require complex logic.

Important Disclaimer: These numbers were cooked out of thin air by yours truly. I determined them with zero research, they carry absolutely not scientific weight, and shouldn't be used in any serious argument. They are wholly my opinion, which is good or bad depending on your point of view and your own opinion of my opinions.

With that out of the way, I'm going to make a bar graph out of my fictional data:

You'll notice that my bar titles could be stronger. I actually did that on purpose in case anyone tries to use that chart in real life. In any case, if you thought that was interesting, then read on. I have many more made-up statistics. For example, here are more numbers I've cooked up:

Pydanny Made Up DevOps Statistics

DevOps is the new hotness. I know because every other Python meetup features someone speaking on it - just like every other Ruby, Perl, and PHP meetup. Anyway... numbers:

• 24.3% Python developers doing DevOps think they could have launched a PaaS (aka Heroku clone) before it got crowded.
• 46.3% Python developers doing DevOps spend all their time writing Chef/Puppet scripts and yet still claim to be Python developers.
• 14% Python developers are worried about so much of the backend being done in Ruby.
• 54% Python developers are just happy that there are many options now and don't care about the internal machinery that much.

This time, because I'm worried about the data being taken seriously, I've titled the bar chart in such a way that no one will reference it in anything important:

Pydanny Made Up Python Enviroment Statistics

Following the obvious logic flow (to me anyway) of DevOps to something else, let's go into Python environments, also known as the VirtualEnv vs Buildout debate, which adds up to an even 100% (making it good pie chart material):

• 77% of Python Developers prefer VirtualEnv.
• 13% of Python Developers prefer Buildout.
• 7% of Python developers rolled their own solution and wish they could switch over.
• 3% of Python developers rolled their own solution and are fiendishly delighted with how they have guaranteed their own job security forever. I know who some of you are and I can say with some confidence that when the Zombie apocalypse happens, no one is going to invite you into their fortified compounds. We hate you that much.

Pydanny Made Up Template Debate Statistics

The made up statistics in this post frequently touch on contentious topics. So let me add another controversial topic, this time the never ending template debate in Python:

• 70% python developers prefer non-XML templates
• 25% python developers prefer XML templates
• 5% python developers wonder why we don't just use the str.format() method and be done with it
• 50% python developers strongly disagree with my Stupid Template Languages blog post from last year.

The display for this data is a lovely pie chart as seen below. In order to make it appear more useful, I took out the part where people disagreed with me and also made it a 3-D pie chart.

Pydanny Made Up Python Web Optimization Statistics

I sometimes get asked how to best optimize a Django site. My answer is 'cache and then cache some more' but there are those who disagree with me and start switching out Django internals before doing anything silly like looking at I/O.  My bet is this same thing happens with other frameworks such as Pyramid.

• 20% developers argue switching template languages.
• 80% developers argue using caching and load balancing.
• 100% Django/Pyramid/Flask/etc core developers argue using caching and load balancing.

Of all the made up statistics in this blog post, I suspect this is the one closest to the truth of things.

Update: Alex Gaynor and Audrey Roy pointed out that the original line graph for this data was not appropriate. My weak defense was that I'm trying not to make things too serious but they stated that the line graph was so inappropriate it distracted from the rest of the post. Thanks for the advice!

Pydanny Made Up Framework Debate Statistics

Alright, let's conclude this article with some statistics I cooked up about frameworks in Python. I'm going to do more then just mention web frameworks, dabbling into other awesome things that the Python community has given us.

• 23.6% of us get web.py and web2py confused with each other.
• 42% Python developers think Pyramid/Flask have awesome names that don't get mispronounced the same way Django does.
• 28% Python developers wish they could find a way to get some SciPy into their projects.
• 22% Python developers wish there was a PEP-8 wrapper for Twisted.
• 49% Twisted developers wish that Python had accepted their standard instead of PEP-8.
• 90% Python developers wonder what they were drinking when they renamed it to BlueBreem and wonder if it is sold over the counter in their municipality.

No chart? Getting this one to look meaningful was turning into a herculean effort. I invite others to render this data into something that look attractive and doesn't lose meaning. Come up with something impressive and I'll put it into a follow-up blog post.