\n\nTo start with here, we are just looking at which tags are used most often. We see the usual suspects here, some of the most common languages used by developers today.\n\nNext, let's count up co-occurrences of tags and find which tags are commonly used together. For example, what are the tags that occur most often with a few important languages like C#, C++, JavaScript, and Python on Developer Stories?\n\n\u003Cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7952\" src=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/top_javascript-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1620\" height=\"1620\" />\n\nNotice that these are still many of the same common, important languages that we saw in the first plot. Languages like Java, C, and these four important languages are commonly used together by developers on their Developer Stories with these four languages, but they are just the most common technologies in general. To explore tag correlations, we want to ask a slightly different question. We want to find tags that are more likely to occur together than with other tags in this dataset. Which tags are most correlated with these four languages?\n\n\u003Cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-7951\" src=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/javascript_cor-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1620\" height=\"1620\" />\n\nWe see a different set of technologies now. These are tags that are more likely to be used by a developer on her or his Developer Story \u003Cem>with\u003C/em> these four languages than with other tags, and now we are using the aggregate data of developers here on Stack Overflow to gain insight into how technologies are used together. We see here, for example, \u003Ca href=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/14/python-growing-quickly/\">more evidence about how developers are using Python\u003C/a> both for data science along with R (another language used for data science), Pandas, and NumPy, as well as for web development with Django and Flask. We are able to find these related technologies because we calculated tag correlations.\n\n\u003Ch2>Network of Correlations\u003C/h2>\n\nWe are not restricted to looking at one tag at a time. We can extend this correlation calculation to many more tags, and then build a network of tags based on how they are correlated with each other.\n\n\u003Ciframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: none;\" src=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/tag_network.html\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\">\u003C/iframe>\n\nIn this interactive network visualization (you can zoom, scroll, and click), the size of each circle represents how often that tag is used; tags with larger circles are used more often. The circles are colored based on their subgroup membership within the network as a whole, which is calculated via \u003Ca href=\"https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9471906/what-are-the-differences-between-community-detection-algorithms-in-igraph/\">many random walks (a cluster walktrap)\u003C/a>. This network includes tags that are used more than 800 times on Developer Stories and have correlations greater than 0.1 with other tags.\n\nThere is so much we can see by exploring this network! One thing we can notice is subgroups within the network that show us tech ecosystems, some of them densely interconnected. We see some groups made up of:\n\n\u003Cul>\n\u003Cli>Front-end web development technologies from HTML to JavaScript to Bootstrap\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>Microsoft-related technologies including C#, .NET, and SQL Server\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>DevOps technologies like AWS and Docker (Go is in this cluster!)\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>Mobile technologies including Android and Objective-C\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\n\nWhere are the technologies that you use, and how are they connected? You can explore this network for yourself; the network data structure is publicly available as a \u003Ca href=\"https://www.kaggle.com/stackoverflow/stack-overflow-tag-network/\">dataset at Kaggle\u003C/a>. You can check out the \u003Ca href=\"https://www.kaggle.com/juliasilge/network-graph/code\">Kaggle kernel I created\u003C/a> to show how to use the network nodes and links to create a network graph.\n\nAnother thing we can notice in this network is that some technologies act as bridges between tech ecosystems. Python, one of the most commonly used languages on Developer Stories, connects to the front-end cluster (through Django), to a Linux/systems administration cluster, to a C/C++/embedded cluster, and to R and machine learning. We see time and again \u003Ca href=\"https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/06/incredible-growth-python/\">how unique a language Python is becoming\u003C/a> in today's technology landscape. Java, git, and JSON are other \"bridge\" technologies that connect parts of this network.\n\nThis analysis used the liked tags on Developer Stories to explore the rich, complex network of technologies that we work within. When developers share who we are as professionals in ways that we actually care about, like with the technologies we want to use, we can all learn more about the developer community. 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