Welcome to your roundup of some of the past week’s most interesting surveys, statistics and reports relevant to those involved in the UK tech industry.
This week, we have statistics relating to coding trends, office pranksters, cybercrime and crowdfunding.
British coders
Half of British developers prefer to code between 8am and 12pm, according to software analysis and measurement specialists CAST, who quizzed 500 developers across the US, UK, Germany and France.
The survey also found 67% of UK coders are proud of their work and believe British code is the best in the world. However, 77% of the French techies surveyed said they think French coding is the best on the planet.
Brit developers do not follow the global trend when it comes to which programming languages are most important to master. Brits believe, more than their global peers, that PHP and Swift are more important than SQL (23%) and C++ (29%).
Northern pranksters
According to new research by Kit Out My Office, workers from the North of England are more likely to prank their colleagues than their southern counterparts.
Some 83% of workers from the North of England said they often take part in workplace pranks, compared with only 69% from the South of England.
The research revealed one respondent was fired for placing a beeping device in a colleague’s desk drawer. It resulted in a search by a third-party security company of the entire building for ‘listening devices’ supposedly placed by competitors.
Cybercrime risk
Website Builder Expert (WBE) conducted research into how vulnerable the EU is to cybercrime. It found Malta to be the EU nation most at risk of cybercrime with a vulnerability score of 42%.
On the opposite end of the scale, Finland was deemed the most cyber-secure country with a vulnerability rating of just 29%.
James Kiernan, director of WBE, said: “With the threat of cybercrime becoming more evident with each passing day, cybersecurity on an international level is more important than ever if countries want to protect their interests and residents.”
Crowdfunding data
In 2016, UK companies raised over $3.96bn via crowdfunding, compared with over $2bn in 2014. That’s according to the Crowdfunding and Marketplace Finance Index (CAMFI), which is a joint venture between crowdfunding analytics company TAB, Zhejiang University AIF, Hangzhou JZTData Science and Technology Co, and BBD UK.
The CAMFI also found crowdfunding to be demonstrating huge growth in China, with companies in the nation raising $134m via crowdfunding platforms in 2014, and $2bn in 2016.
France is also seeing significant growth, with companies raising $70m in 2014, and $159m in 2017 to date.