So about a month ago I added telemetry to AREPL-vscode to get an idea of how my user base was doing. The information I have gotten has been very helpful to me. I learned that people are using my extension every week — a fact that might sound mudane, but for me is increadibly exciting. I have put many hours into AREPL, and knowing that people are using it fills my heart with joy. Open source work is financed not on dollars, but on the positive feedback of users, and the mere fact of knowing I have users is very encouraging.
But there is a dark side to telemetry — giving information away could reveal more than you intended, and more than you wish was known. Internet privacy advocates will be quick to tell you that you should opt out of everything, and keep all information secret, safe, and sacred in the dark.
Whether you follow this practice or not is up to you — if you believe in it strongly, you can opt out of telemetry. But for those of you who keep telemetry enabled, I’d like to thank you.
And what better way to thank the giving of information by giving information in turn?
So without further ado, here are the stats for AREPL in June, analysis included.
Q: How many people have used AREPL so far?
62. 6 have used it in the past week. As you can tell from these numbers, AREPL still has a lot to go popularity wise. It did get three five-star reviews in the vscode marketplace, but this doesn’t seem to have influenced its search rankings much.
Q: What nationality are the users?
Primarily US (19), Japan (9), and Canada (6), but there are a bunch more:
Q: How often do people use AREPL?
Heavy users: 6 (9%) have used it 28 times on average
Light users: 33 (54%) have used it two to ten times
Once only users: 22 (36%) have used it only once
Cross-referencing with the startup error log, 3 of the one-time only users are users that experienced an error starting python. The other 2 people in the error log must have gone on to fix their python path, because they ended up moving into the top end of the light users category.
Cross-referencing with the last used date, 9 of the one time only users have used it in the last 10 days of june. There’s hope for them to be continued users. So out of the 22 once only users, 10 (16%) opened it up and either didn’t like it or forgot about it. The ones that forgot about it will hopefully be reminded next time they check their extensions and see that they still have AREPL installed. Or if I launch another marketing push they might see it again.
Q: Is the popularity of AREPL increasing?
Yes! The popularity of AREPL picked up after Pycon and has been trending upwards.
And that concludes the stats for this month. Thanks for reading!
Some final notes:
Q: Where do I install AREPL?
Q: How can I add application insights to my own extension?
