8 ms·

> Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Sigh. It's clear that PG, as good a writer as he is, is t

> Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Sigh. It's clear that PG, as good a writer as he is, is the one in another world.

cryptoz 11y ago
Perhaps many of us are living in "another world", but I haven't seen a computer in the wild running Windows in the last ~6 months. I've been working in a few different co-working spaces in that time - mostly the startup crowd, I suppose, which heavily tilts towards Mac and Linux. Certainly PG isn't the only one who doesn't see very many Windows computers, and I think this has probably been increasingly true over the last ~9 years since this piece was written.
- doctaj 11y ago
  It's easy to get lost in your own bubble.
- meow_mix 11y ago
  I think most college students will agree that they see windows every single day
- rootlocus 11y ago
  This is a nice example for the Bayes theorem: what's the probability of seeing a computer running Windows "in the wild", given that "the wild" comprises the computers of a startup crowd located in the same area. When you're limiting the universe to such a small fraction of similar samples, you're bound to get skewed results.
doctaj 11y ago
Yeah, OSX has like 8% market share at best. A person paying attention would be more surprised seeing a Mac.
- cryptoz 11y ago
  OS X market share can be 0% if your sample is a corporate office, or it can be 100% if you're in a startup space, a university class, etc. It really really depends on the context and your surroundings. Some people will be surprised by Windows, some by Mac. I think that PG probably assumes that the people he is around are building the future, and therefore, when he doesn't see Windows, he makes a connection there.
  - doctaj 11y ago
    Yeah,I agree with that for sure. My stat was just overall - for desktop computers and laptops, which are admittedly on the decline.
  - lqdc13 11y ago
    A university class? I've never seen a single mac at my US state university 2 years ago.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  A lot (most?) Windows 'installations' come in the form of legacy computers that haven't been upgraded in nearly a decade, or corporate boxes that are basically just terminals running MS Office... When you're talking new personal devices, its mostly a mix of various tablets (non-MS), OSX, ChromeOS and Windows ultrabooks...
Mikeb85 11y ago
Is he? I see a lot of MacBooks and tablets of non-Microsoft origin these days. Half the ThinkPads I see aren't running Windows... When you talk development, its almost always on Linux or OSX, and deployed to a Linux server. MS still holds on to a few markets, and still makes money and does cool things, but they're just not dominant anymore...
- Frondo 11y ago
  Anecdotally, I've just moved over from Linux development to Microsoft, for web stuff. Visual studio and F# are sweet, in some ways I feel like I've been living in the dark ages of development. A year ago I wouldn't have imagined myself saying this, but once they started open sourcing their stuff, I decided to take a look.
  - doctaj 11y ago
    I completely agree. You are missing out on a modern AND mature development platform using Microsoft stuff.
    - eggy 11y ago
      I second that. F* language from MS with dependent types, and compiles to F# and OCaml. I finally gave MS Visual Studio CE a try, and I am blown away. I come from an Emacs/Slime/Lisp(SBCL) on Windows, not Linux, and now that MS has open sourced a lot of it, I am going to stick with it and see if I hit any blocks. Popularity or cool are not my guides. I do have Linux and Mac OS X at home too, but I am always on my Windows notebook.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    Just curious, are you deploying on Windows Server?
    - Frondo 11y ago
      Don't know yet, I think it'll depend on how hard it is for me to get it running on Apache + mod_mono. Reason being, I do have a VPS with about 30 other sites (mostly Wordpress) right now. If I can keep using my existing server for this new project, for now, then that's great. I know I'll eventually have to migrate it onto its own thing (it's a startup that is taking off, go me! :) ), but until I absolutely have to, I want to keep costs down and processes simple. Still, if I've got to deploy to an MS-based VPS, that's certainly not the end of the world, not by a long shot. Just a different thing to learn.
gcb0 11y ago
it is the san francisco bubble. they also think there is a starbucks every 30ft all around the world. and that everyone has unlimited data plans for hundreds of dollar a month like they have running water. dream on, SF.
mhartl 11y ago
When two worlds are different, each is "another world" to the other. What pg means is—well, actually, he tells us later in the same paragraph: All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway. Obviously, pg is exaggerating slightly here for effect, but if you go to a conference for a "cool" language like Elixir or Go—or even for a more established but still slightly edgy language like Python or Ruby—what you'll see in the audience is a few islands of Windows in a sea of Linux and Macs. Go to a more corporate-y conference and you'll see a lot more Windows. So—which world is the past, and which is the future? (Hint: At the corporate-y conference, are there more or fewer Macs than there were five years ago?)
- lqdc13 11y ago
  This is actually not the same thing. You can actually do the same things in Go/Python as you do in Java. Windows is the one and only OS that runs video games well. Same with a lot of other industries dealing with professionals who are not programmers. Example is modeling software (https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare). Maybe Valve will succeed with their Steam Boxes, but it's not the case yet.
  - Hydraulix989 11y ago
    Windows is quickly becoming the OS for VR as well.
- greggman 11y ago
  And if you go to anything game dev related, you know, that place where all the cutting edge GPU related stuff happens, you'll see Windows everywhere.
  - mhartl 11y ago
    When virtually every dev not in gaming is using a Mac, which is the future, and which is the past?
joslin01 11y ago
In the startup world, it's definitely dead, which is probably a decent indicator of a trend that will eventually engulf the entire business world. If my business goes huge, there's no way in hell we're running on Windows and I suspect a lot of other founders are thinking the same thing.
naasking 11y ago
"Computer" is a very general term. Most computers people use on an everyday basis aren't running Windows. For instance, all of your tablets and phones are Android or iOS. Windows phones are virtually non-existent, and Windows tablets are more common, particularly for businesses, but not as common as the corresponding consumer tablets. So PG was right in a strict sense, but not if you narrowly take "computer" to mean "desktop" or "laptop".
Raed667 11y ago
3rd world (and Europe) average user still uses Windows as main OS. When you're in contact with only coders/devs you'll see a lot of Linux and macBooks but outside that small bubble Microsoft rules.
- RI_Swamp_Yankee 11y ago
  This is incorrect. The average user, globally, uses Android as their main OS. Desktops in developing nations are never going to reach the same level of ubiquity as in the US and Europe. AAA Gaming there will be console-driven as well. Desktops in most applications are locked down to the point where they're dumb terminals to run Office and a browser, this is where MS rules, or creative/technical workstations, where Apple currently has a better story and is the only desktop maker growing market-share for the past couple years.

> Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Sigh. It's clear that PG, as good a writer as he is, is the one in another world.

cryptoz 11y ago

Perhaps many of us are living in "another world", but I haven't seen a computer in the wild running Windows in the last ~6 months. I've been working in a few different co-working spaces in that time - mostly the startup crowd, I suppose, which heavily tilts towards Mac and Linux. Certainly PG isn't the only one who doesn't see very many Windows computers, and I think this has probably been increasingly true over the last ~9 years since this piece was written.

doctaj 11y ago
It's easy to get lost in your own bubble.
meow_mix 11y ago
I think most college students will agree that they see windows every single day
rootlocus 11y ago
This is a nice example for the Bayes theorem: what's the probability of seeing a computer running Windows "in the wild", given that "the wild" comprises the computers of a startup crowd located in the same area. When you're limiting the universe to such a small fraction of similar samples, you're bound to get skewed results.

doctaj 11y ago

Yeah, OSX has like 8% market share at best. A person paying attention would be more surprised seeing a Mac.

cryptoz 11y ago
OS X market share can be 0% if your sample is a corporate office, or it can be 100% if you're in a startup space, a university class, etc. It really really depends on the context and your surroundings. Some people will be surprised by Windows, some by Mac. I think that PG probably assumes that the people he is around are building the future, and therefore, when he doesn't see Windows, he makes a connection there.
- doctaj 11y ago
  Yeah,I agree with that for sure. My stat was just overall - for desktop computers and laptops, which are admittedly on the decline.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  A university class? I've never seen a single mac at my US state university 2 years ago.
Mikeb85 11y ago
A lot (most?) Windows 'installations' come in the form of legacy computers that haven't been upgraded in nearly a decade, or corporate boxes that are basically just terminals running MS Office... When you're talking new personal devices, its mostly a mix of various tablets (non-MS), OSX, ChromeOS and Windows ultrabooks...

Mikeb85 11y ago

Is he? I see a lot of MacBooks and tablets of non-Microsoft origin these days. Half the ThinkPads I see aren't running Windows... When you talk development, its almost always on Linux or OSX, and deployed to a Linux server. MS still holds on to a few markets, and still makes money and does cool things, but they're just not dominant anymore...

Frondo 11y ago
Anecdotally, I've just moved over from Linux development to Microsoft, for web stuff. Visual studio and F# are sweet, in some ways I feel like I've been living in the dark ages of development. A year ago I wouldn't have imagined myself saying this, but once they started open sourcing their stuff, I decided to take a look.
- doctaj 11y ago
  I completely agree. You are missing out on a modern AND mature development platform using Microsoft stuff.
  - eggy 11y ago
    I second that. F* language from MS with dependent types, and compiles to F# and OCaml. I finally gave MS Visual Studio CE a try, and I am blown away. I come from an Emacs/Slime/Lisp(SBCL) on Windows, not Linux, and now that MS has open sourced a lot of it, I am going to stick with it and see if I hit any blocks. Popularity or cool are not my guides. I do have Linux and Mac OS X at home too, but I am always on my Windows notebook.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Just curious, are you deploying on Windows Server?
  - Frondo 11y ago
    Don't know yet, I think it'll depend on how hard it is for me to get it running on Apache + mod_mono. Reason being, I do have a VPS with about 30 other sites (mostly Wordpress) right now. If I can keep using my existing server for this new project, for now, then that's great. I know I'll eventually have to migrate it onto its own thing (it's a startup that is taking off, go me! :) ), but until I absolutely have to, I want to keep costs down and processes simple. Still, if I've got to deploy to an MS-based VPS, that's certainly not the end of the world, not by a long shot. Just a different thing to learn.

gcb0 11y ago

it is the san francisco bubble. they also think there is a starbucks every 30ft all around the world. and that everyone has unlimited data plans for hundreds of dollar a month like they have running water. dream on, SF.

mhartl 11y ago

When two worlds are different, each is "another world" to the other. What pg means is—well, actually, he tells us later in the same paragraph: All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway. Obviously, pg is exaggerating slightly here for effect, but if you go to a conference for a "cool" language like Elixir or Go—or even for a more established but still slightly edgy language like Python or Ruby—what you'll see in the audience is a few islands of Windows in a sea of Linux and Macs. Go to a more corporate-y conference and you'll see a lot more Windows. So—which world is the past, and which is the future? (Hint: At the corporate-y conference, are there more or fewer Macs than there were five years ago?)

lqdc13 11y ago
This is actually not the same thing. You can actually do the same things in Go/Python as you do in Java. Windows is the one and only OS that runs video games well. Same with a lot of other industries dealing with professionals who are not programmers. Example is modeling software (https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare https://www.rhino3d.com/mac-feature-compare). Maybe Valve will succeed with their Steam Boxes, but it's not the case yet.
- Hydraulix989 11y ago
  Windows is quickly becoming the OS for VR as well.
greggman 11y ago
And if you go to anything game dev related, you know, that place where all the cutting edge GPU related stuff happens, you'll see Windows everywhere.
- mhartl 11y ago
  When virtually every dev not in gaming is using a Mac, which is the future, and which is the past?

joslin01 11y ago

In the startup world, it's definitely dead, which is probably a decent indicator of a trend that will eventually engulf the entire business world. If my business goes huge, there's no way in hell we're running on Windows and I suspect a lot of other founders are thinking the same thing.

naasking 11y ago

"Computer" is a very general term. Most computers people use on an everyday basis aren't running Windows. For instance, all of your tablets and phones are Android or iOS. Windows phones are virtually non-existent, and Windows tablets are more common, particularly for businesses, but not as common as the corresponding consumer tablets. So PG was right in a strict sense, but not if you narrowly take "computer" to mean "desktop" or "laptop".

Raed667 11y ago

3rd world (and Europe) average user still uses Windows as main OS. When you're in contact with only coders/devs you'll see a lot of Linux and macBooks but outside that small bubble Microsoft rules.

RI_Swamp_Yankee 11y ago
This is incorrect. The average user, globally, uses Android as their main OS. Desktops in developing nations are never going to reach the same level of ubiquity as in the US and Europe. AAA Gaming there will be console-driven as well. Desktops in most applications are locked down to the point where they're dumb terminals to run Office and a browser, this is where MS rules, or creative/technical workstations, where Apple currently has a better story and is the only desktop maker growing market-share for the past couple years.