The 2026 stdlib community survey is open
What would have to be true for you to reach for an existing numerical routine in JavaScript?
We closed our last post, on a hundred interviews, by admitting that "a project's confidence about its users and a project's evidence about its users may be close to unrelated quantities"—so rather than keep guessing, we're asking. The 2026 stdlib community survey is now open.
stdlib is a standard library for JavaScript and Node.js, with an emphasis on numerical and scientific computation, and this survey is part of a National Science Foundation award supporting a sustainable scientific computing ecosystem on the web.
What would have to be true—or visible—for you to reach for an existing numerical routine in JavaScript, instead of writing it yourself or leaving for another language?
So we're asking how you decide if you can trust the numbers a library gives you, whether you've ever had numerical code return an answer that looked plausible and turned out to be wrong, what you did the last time you needed a numerical routine and couldn't find one, and how you check numerical code an AI assistant wrote for you. Short answers are fine, and "I don't know" is real data.
You don't need to have used stdlib to answer. If you've never heard of it, you're exactly the person we're missing. If you tried numerical work in JavaScript and gave up on it, you're the person we can least afford not to hear from. And if you build or maintain numerical libraries and tools of your own, answer as a builder, not only as a user.
We kept it short on purpose. Five to ten minutes; all but the first question are optional.
Your answers help shape what we build and document next. We won't publish anything that identifies you, and we won't quote you without asking first. The last question asks for an email address only if you're open to a follow-up conversation—it's optional, we'll use it only to contact you about this work, and leaving it blank changes nothing else.
This isn't a signup for anything. It ends when you submit it.
Take the survey.
stdlib is an open source software project dedicated to providing a comprehensive suite of robust, high-performance libraries to accelerate your project's development and give you peace of mind knowing that you're depending on expertly crafted, high-quality software.
If you've enjoyed this post, give us a star 🌟 on GitHub and consider supporting the project. Your contributions and continued support help ensure the project's long-term success and are greatly appreciated!
Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2449410.
Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.