"A page for ideas on gathering statistics about how Python is used."

The motivation is to help during discussions about Python where a consensus isn't available. Anecdotes usually fall short in that case.

Ideally, we'd be able to break data down into various groupings, and consider both totals and percentages.

Data Groupings

• new development vs. stable code-bases
• categories (web, scripts, "big data", computation, etc.)
• "bare metal" vs. on top of some framework
• regional usage

Solutions for Gathering Usage Statistics

• data from PyPI (a.k.a. the cheeseshop)
• search results (incl. google, code search sites)

Usage Categories

An unsubstantiated of how Python is used:

Heavy

• web applications
• scripting and tooling
• high-performance computation
• testing (non-Python/embedded/whatever code)

Medium

Light

• games

Other thoughts

• Data from PyPI or google will likely not include closed-source usage.

This topic is the subject of threads on python-list:

• http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-February/1287866.html

• http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2012-February/1287998.html