\label{sec:ssicompare}
This work was inspired by a UK survey led by the Software Sustainability Institute. While their findings are for the wider scientific community in the UK and ours are for the worldwide astronomical community, a comparison is still interesting.
The SSI survey finds that 90% of UK scientists use software in their research. Our survey shows that astronomy is in line with other sciences in the use of software – 100% of astronomers use it. 90% of astronomers write some software (93% of UK astronomers). This is much larger than the SSI survey, which finds that only 56% of researchers, across all disciplines, write some of their software. This implies astronomers are much more dependent on their own software than other sciences.
In the SSI survey, 55% of respondents say they have received some training in software development, with 40% indicating that the training was a formal course and 15% indicating self-directed study. Our categories are not identical, but we find that a similar fraction of astronomers – 57% (53% of UK astronomers) – say that they have received some form of training. However, only 8% say that the training was substantial, while 49% say they received a little training. The decision what constitutes a lot and a little was left to the participants. Those who chose to expand on their decision indicated that a lot corresponded to a formal class while a little corresponded to using on-line materials such as Software Carpentry and Code Academy.
Finally, 40% of our survey respondents who predominantly write their own software have received no training (42% of those who write some of their own software). This fraction is twice as large as the one reported in the SSI survey (21%) and may indicate that in astronomy there are fewer efforts and opportunities to train researchers in software development. This is all the more surprising given that many more astronomers write their own code, according to these surveys.