February 2015 Survey Results: What People Want to Learn

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I recently put together a survey in an attempt to gauge reader’s interest. Here are some of the findings from the survey.

Here is the live survey.

If you haven’t taken it, still feel free to do so. I’ll keep coming back in the future and look at responses.

Places where I shared the survey online. 

I shared the survey online in a few places.

1) On the Learn to Code With Me site via a Hellobar – only for a several day span of time.

2) On my secret site (only some people know about)– also via Hellobar

3) To my email list (this is where most of the responses came from)

4) On my Facebook Page (only two people clicked it.)

5) On my Tumblr (unsure of how many took survey via Tumblr, but I think at least 20)

My mistake … 

On my original version of the survey, I did not include Ruby on Rails, Python or anything related to databases.

After seeing 20 of the first responses trickle in, I realized I made a mistake. So I went back (gasp) and added Ruby on Rails, Python and SQL to the options.

However, out of everyone who took the survey — most of the people took it with all the options available in the first question.

Results, Summarized

At the tie of writing this, 133 people have taken the survey.

Question (1) Which of the following are you interested in learning?

For this question, people could choose multiple options.

The top 5 things most people said that wanted to learn about are:

  1. JavaScript (99 people said they wanted to learn about JS)
  2. HTML (90 people said they wanted to learn more about HTML)
  3. CSS (86 of the respondents said they w anted to learn more about CSS)
  4.  jQuery (63 respondents said they wanted to learn more)
  5. Git & Github (61) and Python (61) – (tied for fifth place)

Of course, there were other fill in responses from people, where a lot said Java and C++.

what-to-learn

Question (2) Which of the following best describes your goal(s) with new-found coding skills?

For this question, people could choose multiple options.

The top 3 answers were:

  1. Make more $$$, in general (76 people answered)
  2. Have more flexibility in my day-to-day (64 people answered)
  3. Study CS or related in college/academic institution (43 people answered)

People could also fill in responses in the “other” section. Some responses:

  • “Actually get a job”
  • “A new hobby”
  • “Get into game design”
what-is-your-goal

Question (3) What is the number one thing standing between you and your goal?

People could only choose one answer.

The top 3 answers were:

  1. Not knowing where to start or what to learn (42 people answered)
  2. Not having enough time (31 people answered)
  3. Unsure of what my actual end-goal is (20 people answered)
  4. Other (20 people answered)
preventing-goal

Why did I have those options?

Speaking about the first part specifically, I have these options because those are all things I know about. Some more than others.

What will I do differently in future surveys?

Maybe only send my next survey to my email list — not share on Tumblr, FB and maybe not even on my actual site.

Out of 133 participants, there was one bad egg. What I mean by that is there was one person who filled in responses with derogatory language — not saying anything helpful. Just being mean to be mean. 

Most people who don’t like what I am doing would not take time to fill out this survey. But some people have too much time on their hands.

To avoid this in the future, I may stick to surveying only people on my email list. Because people who take time to sign-up on the email list clearly have an interest in the site and the site’s goals.

What will I do with the results?

I will use them as a guide to create better content down the road.

And hopefully sometime in the next few months create an ebook or an online course.

Special thanks again to everyone who participated! Hearing what you’re struggling with really helps me.