
Ask HN: How many programmers/hackers are there in the world? - rvivek
Wolfram alpha says it's about 400k (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=programmers+in+world) which I think is too small.
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bitsweet
Most certainly to low, GitHub has over 1 million users alone.
<https://github.com/blog/455-100-000-users>

I believe TCS, a large indian offshore company, employs over 100K programers
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Consultancy_Services>)

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glimcat
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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bejuizb
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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glimcat
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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sagacity
How long is a piece of string? :)

[IMHO, it is the hackers who keep the world/universe going, because they are
the ones who cause chaos/disruption (in absence of which, the 3rd law of
thermodynamics would fail, causing the universe to implode).]

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pbiggar
I've heard figures bandied about a few years ago implying there were about 12
million.

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keeptrying
Employed programmers - 5 million. I saw some research done by a startup for
their VC.

