Ratings Revised

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We asked, you answered: here are the latest results from our survey of what topics you'd most like us to cover, with links to the ones that have been posted. A few notes:

N = 188 responses.
This is the first time data visualization has dropped out of the top 5.
It's also the first time that nerdish subjects like computational complexity and functional languages have placed anywhere near the top.
There's a noticeable mismatch between things we think people should know (like version control) and things people think they want (building desktop GUIs).

Conclusion: more data ≠ more insight.

2.53	Automating Repetitive Tasks
2.51	Basic Programming
2.47	Build a Desktop User Interface
2.45	Coding Style
2.42	Computational Complexity
2.40	Create a Web Service
2.38	Data Structures
2.38	Data Visualization
2.37	Debugging with a Debugger
2.34	Design Patterns
2.34	Designing a Data Model
2.33	Functional Languages
2.27	Geographic Information Systems
2.22	Handling Binary Data
2.18	Image Processing
2.17	Integrating with C and Fortran
2.13	Introduction
2.09	Matrix Algebra
2.07	Object-Oriented Programming
2.07	Packaging Code for Release
2.05	Parallel Programming
2.03	Performance Optimization
1.99	Refactoring
1.95	Reproducible Research
1.95	Static and Dynamic Code Analysis Tools
1.82	Systems Programming
1.76	Testing and Quality Assurance
1.74	Using the Unix Shell
1.73	Version Control
1.65	Working in Teams/on Large Projects
1.40	XML