Surveying the community – what could possibly go wrong

There are 3 major researches in C++ community nowadays. Developer Ecosystem research by JetBrains is conducted yearly, with the infographics and the raw data published for free for everyone. Since launch we learnt many insights on how to collect and process the data to get the results which are not presenting our thoughts on state of the art but close to the real world. The knowledge starts from the way to ask questions and goes to the way we interpret the answers, including the “facepalm” issues we meet yearly.

In this talk, I'll feature the results of the recent C++ community surveys, make some comparisons, and will try to showcase how to treat the differences. We'll also dive into the survey methodology aspects, learning how to remove brand, targeting and sampling biases, as well as see how a "properly" asked question changes the data in our C++ reality. This knowledge is crucial for everyone who rely on such researches and want to use them in a correct way. Come and learn how the magic numbers are collected and how to apply them to your decisions!