Far too often on this site, people will talk about usage but not say where their experiences are from.
I live in Des Moines, Iowa. I have lived most of my life in Iowa, with a few years each in Texas, Colorado, and Ukraine. All of my usage experience is from those locations, the people I met there, and media.
My philosophy says that the point of language is to communicate information, so the best word choice is the one that will be understood the way you intend it. This means that the correct word choice depends on your audience and is often not the technically precise one.
I'm a software engineer.