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Smart move by Windows. I guess that developer usage of an OS ultimately results in developer developments for the OS, though I don't have any number for this. I

by sveme 11y ago

Smart move by Windows. I guess that developer usage of an OS ultimately results in developer developments for the OS, though I don't have any number for this. It seems to me that a lot of developers, especially at startups, have switched to OS X with its shiny GUI and UNIX compatibility. I'd hazard the guess that this will ultimately result in OS X becoming more of a developer target over time. Initially for developer-related stuff (see Dash as an example that is only available for OS X (and Zeal for Linux)), but later probably for other stuff as well. What's illustrative for the dominance of *NIXes in development are the number of projects on Github that contain only +NIX installation instructions and no Windows instructions (again, anecdata). So if Windows wants to remain competitive, they need to retain developers. And as the +nix way of developing seems to be dominant now in quite a number of fields, Microsoft needs to adapt. Why, you're asking, do I think that the +NIX way of development is dominant today? In a nutshell, Web -> Unix Servers -> POSIX shells -> Languages that work best with POSIX -> OSs that are POSIX-compliant. Edit: Asterisks don't work as expected here. At least not in a Markdown-compatible way.

jayflux 11y ago
Is it that smart? Being developer friendly sounds like just plain common-sense, not some genius breakthrough. The question should be more why has it taken them so long to get to this point.
- pjc50 11y ago
  They always tried to be Microsoft developer friendly, and I think sort of assumed that UNIX was going to go away when they won. But it's now clear that UNIX has won for web services, and the web has beaten old-style client-server. And the Windows remote admin/cloud admin/mass deployment features appear to have lost as well.
- sveme 11y ago
  Maybe. It is definitely the common-sense thing to do today, five years ago, it would have been smart. From a pre-Nadella perspective, you could have called it revolutionary, but now we're used to Microsoft participating in OSS, so it's much less so.
  - pritambaral 11y ago
    Wasn't Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" chant more than five years ago?

by sveme 11y ago

jayflux 11y ago

Is it that smart? Being developer friendly sounds like just plain common-sense, not some genius breakthrough. The question should be more why has it taken them so long to get to this point.

pjc50 11y ago
They always tried to be Microsoft developer friendly, and I think sort of assumed that UNIX was going to go away when they won. But it's now clear that UNIX has won for web services, and the web has beaten old-style client-server. And the Windows remote admin/cloud admin/mass deployment features appear to have lost as well.
sveme 11y ago
Maybe. It is definitely the common-sense thing to do today, five years ago, it would have been smart. From a pre-Nadella perspective, you could have called it revolutionary, but now we're used to Microsoft participating in OSS, so it's much less so.
- pritambaral 11y ago
  Wasn't Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" chant more than five years ago?