[spenczar5]

I write a bit of Rust, but not for work, and I never heard about this survey. I think that's probably common - the more Rust you write, the more likely it is that you fill out the survey, so the sample is probably very biased towards people who work with it a lot (ie, professionally).

Or - you could describe that as biased, at least. Alternatively, maybe the intent of these language surveys is exactly to find out what committed power-users think. Either way, interpreting results from language surveys is tricky business.

[apendleton]

I think it's true that surveys like this will skew towards more serious/dedicated practitioners, but in addition to professionals, the Rust community has also at various times attracted people who were excited about bleeding-edge things, or PLT/type-theory people, etc., and I think this survey probably does show a shift in the user base towards work-a-day users and away from these other groups.

(Or more succinctly: the absolute numbers are probably meaningless, but the trends are maybe worth watching.)

[estebank]

The self-selection bias effect is why the survey on isolation is not enough to derive meaning on its own. But, looking at the trends over time as the yearly survey is analyzed and compared with the previous ones is useful.