Meaningless??? I finally made the list.  😀   There is clearly a decrease in volume here, and stack overflow volume has fallen off a steep cliff.   Doubtless some people have moved off of SAS, or even from SAS programming to Viya, but I would guess since stack overflow shows the same decrease in volume, the real answer is AI.   Honestly, AI coding is really amazing.  A year or two ago I tried it with SAS and was like "meh, too many hallucinations, probably wasn't enough SAS code on the internets for the models to learn."  In the past couple months I've been using AI with coding both SAS and python, and even the base models are phenomenal.  If you can code in VS code SAS extension and highlight a macro and ask copilot "Why doesn't this work?", that's a lot easier and faster than posting to communities.  Last week when I asked copilot about python scoping rules, it actually answered with a comparison to SAS macro language scoping rules.  Basically said "Oh, because you're a SAS programmer you're used to macro language scoping rules that work like [this], but python function scopes work like [that]."  It was pretty amazing.  Similarly magical: prompts like "Generate a macro that will recursively search a folder tree and list all the .sas files, I want to call it like: %listfiles(path=Q:\projects\)" and watching the AI write a functional macro in a few seconds.   I expect non-programming online communities are seeing similar decreases.  Today if I'm trying to find the best feed for my birdfeeder that will attract pretty birds and discourage sparrows, I don't look for communities.birding.com, I just ask Claude.  (Well, TBH I did join a BirdBuddy sub on reddit, just for the bird photos...)   Having sadly watched SAS-L tail off years ago, I would hate to see communities.sas.com do the same.  I think there is HUGE value in communities.sas.com, and actual humans helping people think through problems, and proposing multiple solutions.  I've never had an AI respond to a question sagely like Paige Miller, "Why do you want to do that? Could be an XY Problem."   So I'll plan on sticking with communities.sas.com as long as there are interesting questions coming in.   Yes, agree old volume-based metrics may not be as useful as they were years ago. ... View more

I found a new use-case for AI programming with SAS.   Since you didn't provide data, I showed it a picture of your chart, and your SAS code, and it generated sample data:   data longnew; length DM_range $10 texture_label $20; input DM_range $ texture_order texture_label $ texture_value; datalines; 15_20 1 Creamy 18 15_20 2 Dry 13 15_20 3 Mushy 19 15_20 4 None 5 15_20 5 Smooth 12 15_20 6 Stringy 8 15_20 7 Watery 25 20_25 1 Creamy 15 20_25 2 Dry 6 20_25 3 Mushy 20 20_25 4 None 5 20_25 5 Smooth 26 20_25 6 Stringy 8 20_25 7 Watery 20 25_30 1 Creamy 12 25_30 2 Dry 7 25_30 3 Mushy 20 25_30 4 None 5 25_30 5 Smooth 18 25_30 6 Stringy 8 25_30 7 Watery 30 30_35 1 Creamy 8 30_35 2 Dry 8 30_35 3 Mushy 20 30_35 4 None 5 30_35 5 Smooth 13 30_35 6 Stringy 10 30_35 7 Watery 36 <15 1 Creamy 10 <15 2 Dry 24 <15 3 Mushy 20 <15 4 None 5 <15 5 Smooth 10 <15 6 Stringy 6 <15 7 Watery 25 ; run; And also generated this GRADAR step, which lists 5 values for cstars and wstars.  Your code only has two:   footnote1 j=c h=10pt 'N = 502'; title1 j=c h=13pt 'Comparison of textures by DM range for BL516 (relative %)'; proc gradar data=longnew; chart texture_label / freq=texture_value overlay=DM_range starcircles=(25 50) cstarcircles=black cstars=(aqua red green brown purple) /*updated*/ wstars=(2 2 2 2 2) /*updated*/ cframe=white ; run; quit; ... View more