This summer, we sent out a survey to all our ActiveTcl downloaders and customers. We wanted to gain some insights into how and why people use ActiveTcl. As a result, we’ve created a handy little infographic (at the bottom of this blog) depicting the survey results–but I thought I would share a few highlights in this blog.
One of the most surprising results was the answer to the question of how long respondents have been using Tcl. We expected the majority of responses to be in the 10+ year range (Tcl is a well established language) and they were a significant portion of the results at 37%. But almost 54% of users replied that they’d been using Tcl for 3 years or less. This was great to see! With the emergence of IoT and Tcl’s suitability to those applications, it seems that Tcl is embarking on a resurgence of sorts. And, our Tcl users also have two new ActiveTcl builds to look forward to coming this October: 8.5.19 and 8.6.6!
Another interesting statistic is regarding the industries where Tcl users work. The responses were incredibly varied and ranged from aerospace (12%) to finance (5%) to healthcare (9%) to academia (5%), and to software (a more generic catch-all) at 42%. It’s nice to see that Tcl is so highly regarded and necessary across a wide variety of industries; this will help to ensure its longevity.
Finally, I wanted to end on the following comment from one of our users, which was echoed by many respondents:
“I appreciate the work that ActiveState has put into their dynamic language distributions.”
We pride ourselves on the quality and stability our language distributions, and this would not be possible without the great feedback from the Tcl community. We want to thank everyone for all their hard work in keeping Tcl vibrant and for everyone who replied to our survey. Feel free to add your thoughts to the comments below whether you had a chance to participate in the survey or not.
P.S. ActiveState will be at the Tcl Conference this November (as always) and we hope to see you there! For more information, please visit: https://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2016/index.html
One of the most surprising results was the answer to the question of how long respondents have been using Tcl. We expected the majority of responses to be in the 10+ year range (Tcl is a well established language) and they were a significant portion of the results at 37%. But almost 54% of users replied that they’d been using Tcl for 3 years or less. This was great to see! With the emergence of IoT and Tcl’s suitability to those applications, it seems that Tcl is embarking on a resurgence of sorts. And, our Tcl users also have two new ActiveTcl builds to look forward to coming this October: 8.5.19 and 8.6.6!
Another interesting statistic is regarding the industries where Tcl users work. The responses were incredibly varied and ranged from aerospace (12%) to finance (5%) to healthcare (9%) to academia (5%), and to software (a more generic catch-all) at 42%. It’s nice to see that Tcl is so highly regarded and necessary across a wide variety of industries; this will help to ensure its longevity.
Finally, I wanted to end on the following comment from one of our users, which was echoed by many respondents:
“I appreciate the work that ActiveState has put into their dynamic language distributions.”
We pride ourselves on the quality and stability our language distributions, and this would not be possible without the great feedback from the Tcl community. We want to thank everyone for all their hard work in keeping Tcl vibrant and for everyone who replied to our survey. Feel free to add your thoughts to the comments below whether you had a chance to participate in the survey or not.
P.S. ActiveState will be at the Tcl Conference this November (as always) and we hope to see you there! For more information, please visit: https://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2016/index.html
