The question behind these results is:
Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)
My interpretation is the following:
- Has worked with and wants to work with next year → Loved
- Has worked with and doesn’t want to work with → Dreaded
- Hasn’t worked with and wants to work with → Wanted
26.47% loved may actually be a very good result for Fortran. I’m happy that Fortran even appears on the list–I don’t recall seeing it in prior years of SO surveys, granted, I don’t follow it every year.
I don’t think this has anything to do with communication. Instead, I assume that most responders to the SO survey that have worked with Fortran, did so not by choice but by requirement, and likely in the context of some legacy code. So, it’s possible that 3/4 of the responders merely had to do it to get the job done and move on. So, this specific result may have more to do with culture and history than communication. Fortran is not for everybody. It’s not even for most people. That’s fine.
And 1/4 of the responders who worked with Fortran seem to enjoy doing it. It may be reasonable to assume that these people program Fortran by choice.
Perhaps more relevant result is that 277 (0.39%) of the survey responders haven’t worked with Fortran but want to. IMO this is the target audience that we should aim to reach. For comparison, the Fortran Discourse has 467 users that have posted at least once.