
Notice: Undefined index: admin in /home/pillowan/www-shaw-weil-marian/displayCommon_inc.php on line 171
Notice: Undefined index: displaysql in /home/pillowan/www-shaw-weil-marian/security_inc.php on line 108
The ?55M End-User Programmers? Estimate Revisited
Notice: Undefined index: displaysql in /home/pillowan/www-shaw-weil-marian/security_inc.php on line 102
Technical Report CMU-ISRI-05-100/CMU-HCII-05-100, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 2005.
KeyWords:end user programming,end user software engineering,software usage
In 1995, Boehm predicted that by 2005, there would be ?55 million performers? of ?end-user programming? in the
United States. Examining the original context and method which generated this number reveals that it actually
estimates the number of computer users in businesses?not programmers, per se?and it assumes constant computer
usage rates. This paper extends Boehm?s estimate using fresh Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, including the
latest BLS occupational projections (which are for 2012), and a richer estimation method.
We estimate that in 2012, there will be 90 million end-users in American workplaces. Of these, we anticipate that
over 55 million will use spreadsheets or databases (and therefore will be potential end-user programmers), while
over 13 million will describe themselves as programmers. Thus, the potential pool of end-user programmers will probably substantially exceed the population who view themselves as programmers. Each of these estimates, in
turn, substantially exceeds the latest BLS projections of fewer than 3 million professional programmers in 2012.
Since not all end-users perform the same programming tasks, we surmise that the vast, heterogeneous pool of endusers
likely will benefit from a diversity of tools to support their programming activities. Developing such tools
efficiently requires a better characterization of what features are valued by each end-user sub-population. To that
end, this paper concludes by outlining plans for future research, including creating an abstraction-focused
categorization of end-users.
Preferred citation: C. Scaffidi, M. Shaw, and B. Myers. The "55M End user Programmers" Estimate Revisited. Technical Report CMU-ISRI-05-100/CMU-HCII-05-100, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 2005.
Entry last Updated 2006-05-04
Notice: Undefined index: admin in /home/pillowan/www-shaw-weil-marian/displaypaper_inc.php on line 29
You are visiting Mary Shaw's
Bibliographic pages (Copyright © 2002, 2005,2007
by Roy Weil and others.
All rights reserved ) It contains the database of papers
published by her and others at Carnegie Mellon
Computer Science Department. The software used to index and search
these papers is Marian - the on-line-braian, available at
Marian's Home site. Comments and
suggesions are welcome