Erik Tollerud edited Writing Software.tex  almost 9 years ago

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\subsection{Do Astronomers Use Their Own Software?}  \label{ssec:own}  We ask the survey participants to best describe the authorship of the software that they use. The goal of this question is to find what is the predominant practice in the community: do most of us use "black box" software packages written by few or do most of us write custom software. We find that most often we do both (Figure \ref{fig:write1}, first panel): $57\%\pm2\%$ choose this option. One third of survey participants say that they mostly write their own software ($33\%\pm2\%$), while only a small portion of survey participants predominantly use software written by others: $11\%\pm1\%$. Overall, 89\% of all participants write some of their own software. 

In conclusion, the majority of astronomers, $\sim90\%$ write at least some of their own software, across all demographics explored in our survey and a third of survey participants predominantly rely on their own software.