Max Schireson's blog

There’s an interesting poll on database usage running on Hacker News.

As eager as I am to see MongoDB catch MySQL (still 3x ahead of us even in the HN demographic), and as happy as I am to see us widen our lead over more direct competitors to ~6x (vs 3-4x last year), the most interesting thing to me is what appears to be a significant change in the HN demographic vs the same poll a year ago.

Last year, of around 1100 total responses, 1% were using Oracle and 5% were using Microsoft.

This year, of around 6300 total responses in the first day, 8% were using Oracle and 12% were using Microsoft.

I don’t think Oracle has been dramatically increasing its market share among independent developers. Instead, it appears that the developers who use Oracle (I debated over the correct adjective and decided not to choose one) are using Hacker News in greater proportion – though I think they are still underrepresented relative to their overall numbers.

Glad to see more folks using HN, its a good site.

— Max