Jason's Notes About Stuff

It seems like only yesterday that I quit my job in Atlanta, Georgia and moved back to Canada to start my custom software development company, Syllogistic Software Inc. As it turns out, that was actually about seven years ago! In 2008, at the 5-year mark, I did some research about how long typical startups last.  I found the following heavily referenced article , claiming 55%, 60%, and 63% failure/closure rates in years 5, 6 and 7, respectively. These numbers aren't exact, but give a pretty good idea of how long typical businesses last.  Running your own business is not easy.  It requires good planning, great execution, awesome support from your friends and family, and just a little bit of luck . I was fortunate to have all of the above, but that still doesn't mean that it was smooth sailing the whole way.  There were lots of bumps, and a few times I was ready to toss in the towel and close up shop. I've put together a brief timeline of some of the major points

Back in 2007, I wrote about the most popular web languages and frameworks . It seemed about time to do a quick update. Here are the current standings in my super non-scientific Google popularity contest: PHP: 7.5 billion results (154% increase ) ASP.NET: 158 million results (84% increase ) Ruby: 81.6 million results (19% decrease ) Python: 47.6 million results (not measured last time) As for frameworks: Symfony: 12.9 million results (180% increase ) CakePHP: 8.8 million results (83% increase ) Ruby on Rails: 7.8 million results (44% increase ) I'd like to add a few more numbers, however. The trend is moving towards browser-based programming using Javascript, so have a look at these interesting searches: Javascript: 561 million results YUI: 18.4 million results jQuery: 16.8 million results HTML5: 9.1 million results So based on these numbers, one might conclude: PHP and ASP.NET are going strong Ruby may have lost its luster, and Python is still a bi