Robert MacLean

Developer User Group 2014 Survey results

Published on Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

This year we launched the first annual user group, and let me say thank you to every single one of you for taking the time to help us improve it. For this survey, all questions were optional, so you may see some differences in the numbers. This post is meant to share the data, and I’m not going to speculate about what this could mean or how we will adjust the group based on it at this point. Let’s have a look at the data!

Comments

The final item in the survey is the first I want to discuss—the comments. Many were along the line of congratulations, which is awesome, but there are four I want to highlight here.

More code, please, e.g., everyone has talked about "everything must be unit tested," yet not once have I seen the actual code. I AM UNIT TESTING, but I feel the coverage is not enough, so it would be helpful to have a real-life example of 100% coverage regarding test-driven development.

We will be having the awesome Martin Cronje in June doing a talk exactly on this! Another idea would be to attend CodeRetreats, where this is a major focus of the events. A personal comment based on the talks I have given: the time for a presenter is limited, so if they are talking about SignalR and adding unit tests, not only does it take time away from the talk but can also confuse the audience.

A suggestion for some of the discussions is to have a practical aspect where coders can code.

I love the idea of the audience coding along with the talk, but there are logistical reasons this doesn’t work well in our format. The presentation style is the one that works best.

Have more advice for novice/beginners to programming.

Below, I’ll talk about what type of events we run most often. While the bulk of our talks are technology-focused—which can be tough for novices—we have a big chunk that are about methodologies, theories, stories, and patterns. These are perfect for novices since they share valuable information that doesn’t rely on technical understanding.

I haven’t attended for some time due to other commitments, but for some time, I thought it would be beneficial to have a bit more conversation/talks about open-source languages and projects. I understand the group was initially primarily started around Microsoft products, and that’s great—but in my field, open-source is more dominant. It’s just an observation, though. Nothing against the setup of the group per se.

I disagree with this view—having a look at our past events, the breakdown of the sessions is as follows:

image

There are a few events that fit into multiple categories. A great example is Bringing hipsterism and skinny jeans to .Net with ScriptCS. This is a talk about Microsoft technology (C# & .NET) but focused on an open-source technology built on top of it (ScriptCS).

Looking at the numbers—we’re more about open-source technology and developer improvement than Microsoft.

Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the Developer User Group?

The first and most important question was how satisfied or dissatisfied people were, on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being bad—5 being great), and we hit an average of just over 4! 😊

How likely are you to recommend the Developer User Group?

The second question is very important for us because we want to grow the group, and being recommended is the best way for that. Here, we did a scale from 1 to 5 and scored even better, averaging over 4.4!

Overall, how do you find the complexity of the sessions?

The third question is about how members find the content—also on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being too simplistic and 5 being too complex. The "just right" spot is 3, and we came in almost exactly at that!

Start time

image The most-discussed issue in the group is the start time—it’s brought up almost every month in the comments. Keeping the time the same really outperformed the other options, both individually and when grouped into early (16h00/16h30), medium (17h00/17h30), and late (18h00/18h30). We’re planning to use the early start time to allow for longer sessions with multiple topics going forward, so hopefully, that will enable people to get the best of both worlds.

What do you hope to gain from the Developer User Group?

image The only item allowing multiple options—also one of the most important—is: What do you want? Almost everyone said learning new skills and networking.

Age

image Moving into the group’s demographics—the first one is age, with the majority between 26–35.

What is your level?

image Next is the level, showing a strong skew toward the senior tier.

What is your primary programming language?

image The third demographic—vital for planning content—is the primary development language. We have a great mix, but the strongest community is C#.

What is your primary type of development work?

image In line with planning content, knowing what people are doing is vital. Web work (internal and external) is a strong lead, followed by integration and mobile.

Organisation size

image How big are the companies that developers come from? Here’s a strong split between small (under 20 employees) and large (over 90), which seems accurate for the South African industry.

Role in purchasing?

image Finally, a question we can use when discussing with sponsors: what role people have in purchasing. Here, the results show some influence—or none.

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