…as it happens at so many elections.
My first EDA software was Orcad from the mid 80’s so I must be old 
A tad more than contribute on a regular basis. 
Also, I don’t know (or care) how this works but the system seems to delete some inactive accounts so the totals don’t seem to be completely inflated by unused accounts.
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That’s interesting, thanks.
Well, so far I’m surprised.
59 participants in 18 hours is great!
I’d also expected a total of at least 80% in the 50 - 60 and 60+ categories (just an impression I had from reading this forum for a while), but not so… another pleasant surprise.
Im also surprised but because I expected the majority to be young engineers and technicians. Most users seem to be my age (best ! agers ) ?
I wonder if this is a general trend for HW development ? Maybe the “real” work gets outsourced more and more ?
Fact is most of my younger colleagues prefer development on a purely simulation basis. I dont know anyone here who has ever fabricated a PCB at home. Most of them buy complete modules for Arduino or Raspberry.
Having ruined a lot of clothes with chemicals and hot solder I can fully understand this, still it feels sad to me…
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I doubt they have the time and inclination to spend time in this forum. They probably only visit if they have a problem or query.
If the poll was left open for a year you may find your expectations met, as, looking at the count and Hermit’s statistics, I’d say most regular contributors (those with available time) have voted.
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I would also guess that that group is more likely to be perceived as drive-by-poster or post-and-run user in such a form of forum.
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I’ve done some counting about forum use in the last month.
Edit:
As noted below by franzee and stair, these statistics are probably skewed, but you could treat them as a minimum.
So there were 31 people who visited every day, 16 people who only missed one day (or have not visited today yet), etc.
Number of people who visited 10 times or more:
24+16+10+3+5+4+4+3+3+5+3+3+56 = 139
… and 638 who visited a few times, and a grand total of:
139+138+500 = 777
Days: People:
31 24
30 16
29 10
28 3
27 5
26 4
25 4
24 3
23 3
22 5
21 3
20 3
10-19 56
5 - 9 138
1 - 4 500
60 people have read over 500 posts,
25 people have posted more then 20 replies.
14 people have created more then two topics,
20 people created two topics each.
98 people created a single topic.
I got the info from: KiCad.info Forums
I could be off by a few, because I manually counted the “[Page Down]” with some corrections.
Might also be skewed because some only log in when they need to.
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I would second this, I stop by at least once a week but only rarely actually log in
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I guess peak PCB design was in the late 80s, back when a computer meant a lot of boards.
In the last few years the even the PC market has dwindled, I saw so many motherboard brands 20 years ago, few now.
I’d differ with that opinion. Cast your eyes about your house and ask what doesn’t have a PCB?
Electronics seem to have superseded electro/mechanical devices even in the most inhospitable conditions.
That and designing PCB is more challenging than ever. Fine-pitch BGAs, tens of gigabit per lane high speed interfaces and small wifi/bluetooth antennas in everything. I guess PCB design in the 80s was simply more fun than it is now.
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If someone has there 10+ kid using KiCad they should talk to my kid to get her on this board. I can only wish. Though she does like to route boards for about five minutes until she gets board.
Me too, they taught it at my college (Orcad) until I pursuaded them to move to Ultimate/Ultiboard.
First used racal redac.
I designed with racal redac (around 1989) only one PCB. It was tester for our products. We used that tester till 2004.
I was (not easy) able to run racal redac (distribution on 4 x 360k floppies) at PC with 640k RAM and 2 floppy drives (no HDD!!). It was said that its schematic editor was worst then Orcad. I have written a simple program converting Orcad netlist to racal redac netlist and everyone around me were using it.