Puzzling IDE Evidence

Eclipse’s Ian Skerrett reports that their market share is up to 65% and growing, and that NetBeans sank in the last year, based on a plausible-looking survey from BZ Research (publishers of SD Times and Eclipse Review). David Berlind is thinking about me buying him dinner next year. But wait: Roman Strobl ripostes, showing the numbers of unique instances of NetBeans that are used enough to be calling into the update center looking for patches; and it shows quite a different picture. First, this is a genuinely interesting statistical anomaly. I don’t think for a second that either Ian or Roman is lying; there are some good suggestions as to what might be going on in both Ian’s and Roman’s comments. Second, I love this competitive spirit; when engineers try to top each other, customers win.