Ask HN: How many programmers/hackers are there in the world?

Re:Ask HN: How many programmers/hackers are there in the world? by glimcat on Sunday February 05, 2012 @08:55PM (#3555904)

It depends on your definition. Something like one in a couple thousand is probably reasonable, or a few million.

If we're talking competent and capable of independently producing professional-grade output, you'll see another reducing factor of around 1:100 or more...so already down to a few tens of thousands. Once we start breaking that down into subfields like data mining or computer vision, the number of people in the field can get rather small.

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Re:Ask HN: How many programmers/hackers are there in the world? by bejuizb on Monday February 06, 2012 @07:54AM (#3557214)

But the question was number of programmers, Not in any particular sub-domain. Theoretically, even mathematicians can be called as programmers, only that they deal in Language called as Mathematics

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Re:Ask HN: How many programmers/hackers are there in the world? by glimcat on Monday February 06, 2012 @11:28AM (#3557934)

The question was overly vague, which is why the first thing I said was "it depends on your definition." The broad estimate is on the first line.

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