Thanks to many of the StackOverflow.com users for pointing me to the official data dump, available here, I was able to complete my experiment.
I measured, using the number of questions asked containing a specific tag, the activity of various programming languages throughout the week. My hypothesis is: Newer dynamic languages like Ruby and Python will see a rise in questions ask
ed on the weekend while more corporate languages like C# and Java will see a dropoff in activity on the weekend.
My theory is that programmers choose to use languages like Python and Ruby for their personal projects, despite their weaknesses, because these languages are more fun to program in. Since programmers tend to work on these projects at night and on the weekends, they will probably be asking questions related to their projects during these times.
Fortunately, the results supported my hypothesis. A plot (made u
sing Python) of the relative number of questions asked per day of the week is shown below. The values were computed by calculating the percentage of questions asked for each topic relative to the total number of questions being asked. This controls for the overall drop in traffic to Stackoverflow.com on the weekends.
Python and Ruby both have a sharp rise on the weekend, while C# and Java both fall off. The fall of C# is quite a bit more pronounced than that of Java, but the effect is still clear. Another interesting note is that the two "workweek languages" both have a rise in activity on Mondays. Maybe programmers leave work Friday and continue to mull over problems at work during the weekend, then ask their problems early Monday morning.
Even though the relative activity of Python and Ruby rises on the weekend, it is still important to note that C# still sees activity around three times higher. This shows that there are still more people using C# than Python on the weekend, just not as many as during the week.
I'm not too sure exactly what the implications of these results are. Let me know what you think.
