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Comment by emillon | Hacker News Reader

I did not answer this survey, for the following two reasons:

- there are a lot of open-ended questions. It's probably very long to fill in.

- required full name and email are a showstopper for me. Having a required email is ok of course, but why do you make it required ? And what about the full name ?

I believe that lots of people will share these concerns so I hope that it can help you tune your survey so that it's more successful.

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I also stopped reading at the full name.

Thank you for your feedback! Made the full name optional and added an anonymous checkbox. All responses will be made anonymous by default.

Your anonymity checkboxes need to be converted to either a single checkbox or a set of radio buttons. Right now you can select either or both options, which doesn't make sense.

Thanks, good catch.

I entered my full name as i don't mind if you email me, but if published somewhere, anonymity to some regard would be nicer.

Names can be kept anonymous when the results are posted. It's definitely designed to get long-form answers. If you are interested in a shorter poll version I'd be curious to hear what you were expecting!

Surveys like this should always be fully anonymous. If the name isn't published, why is it collected? Asking hackers to provide their full name is like cryptonite.

As for a shorter survey - The form itself could be a lot more inviting. For instance, the question "Did you know anybody else your age that programmed" is a simple Yes or No. Or does it want me to give away the personal details of that person as well?

can be kept private. Ideally we can publish the results along with your name.

Think about this as questions that would end up in a book like Programmers at Work. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141

Well, we do have Coders at Work.

http://www.codersatwork.com/

I filled out a few of the answers very thoroughly then realized it was just too much. With the red asterisk of requirement, I lost interest.

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