3 ms·

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so

by nickjj 7y ago

You'd be surprised about this. A ton of developers use Windows even if they are developing software that runs on Linux servers (myself included). Especially so in the last few years with WSL being quite good and Docker being available. 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. I happen to have a few tech courses on programming and Docker and none of it requires writing Windows specific apps. Just general web apps. Over 50% of the people who take my courses are on Windows. Windows usage for Linux based development is real.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.
- nickjj 7y ago
  I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be. In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available. As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware. Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot. Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed. In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use
  - ryan-allen 7y ago
    Check out the VS Code SSH remote, if your internet is good enough or if you have a spare computer lying around, you can develop as if it's 'on the desktop' but you get none of the friction and all of the bare metal speed, I switched from terminal VIM a few years ago and the intellisense makes it worth it. There is a VSVim plugin that is... pretty good if you haven't gone too far down the VIM rabbit hole (my usage was and still is pretty basic).
  - bluedino 7y ago
    WSL is one workaround after another
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. I keep thinking about the eventual replacement for my MacBook Pro. Every time I hear something like this, every time I see MS's open source contributions, etc. I keep thinking about Windows as a replacement. At the top of the list of reasons why that's unlikely to happen is shit like these dark patterns to enforce invasive telemetry. I don't care how good WSL is, I don't want to be spied on or coerced into allowing spyware to run. The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you. I've used chocolataey (ugh), and I don't want to do all of my development in a VM. I recently set up a Win 7 VM to get a small C# library built. Turns out it was easier to build it on my Mac and copy it over. Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates Let me stop you right there. I'm not going to consider anything with forced spyware and forced updates. Until those are fixed I don't care about the rest.
    - nipinium 7y ago
      > I've used chocolataey (ugh) use scoop instead.
      - GordonS 7y ago
        Chocolatey had so much promise, but it just doesn't deliver. At least in my experience, software tends to be outdated, and the packaging often of dubious quality. There are also multiple packages available for a lot of software, so you don't know which one to choose. Oh, and the Chocolatey website is pretty awful too. I do like scoop, but of course the selection available is much smaller than Chocolatey, at least for now. Come to think of it, it's kind of strange that Microsoft never created a packaging system for Windows (aside from the Store; I mean for non-UWP apps).
sukilot 7y ago
WSL is interesting and fun, but too uncanny valley for Linux development. I stick with VirtualBox.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  I stick with VMM. I won't touch oracle with my friend's 10 foot pole. And if I have to run Windows, its from a Qubes DispVM, with whitelisted network configuration.
non-entity 7y ago
occasionally I'll reinstall Windows for something and use it as a daily driver for a while out of laziness
input_sh 7y ago
> 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. Now expand that over the years and you'll get a clear downward trajectory: 2013: 60.4% 2014: 57.9% 2015: 54.5% 2016: 52.1% 2018: 49.9% 2019: 47.5% That's 12.9% less market share compared to just six years ago. Note that they haven't asked about the OS in 2017 and that the numbers I've found here[0] for 2019 are a few % smaller than yours. I've also used "all respondents" instead of the professional ones because they didn't make the distinction until 2018, but quite frankly, that works in Microsoft's favor since professionals are relying on it even less. [0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019/#technology-_-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019/#technology-_...

by nickjj 7y ago

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

I am certainly open to the idea of being surprised by this -- there very well could be more developers using Microsoft as the operating system they use for their development machine, however I do wonder if the population of Stack Overflow users is a good, un-skewed sample of all developers.

nickjj 7y ago
I don't think too many people would be using Windows if it were really bad for Linux based development. I sure as heck wouldn't be. In an ideal world I would be running native Linux but I had trouble with some audio gear not working and my favorite video editing tool doesn't run in Linux, nor do some of the games I play -- so I use Windows because that's what's available. As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. For example I spent 95% of my time in WSL using tmux and terminal Vim to write code full time (with fzf and everything you would expect on the command line). It's really fast. The wsltty terminal has almost as low input latency as xterm on native Linux (which I run on my modified Chromebook). While developing all sorts of web apps (Flask, Phoenix, Rails, Webpack, etc.) inside of Docker the volume performance is fast enough where I never once had complaints even on 5 year old hardware. Then I'm a hotkey away from opening any program with command line launchers, switching virtual desktops with other hotkeys, running VMs for testing server deployments, recording and editing videos and playing any games I want without having to think twice about it or dual boot. Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates, Windows 10 Pro is not that bad from an all around "I use my computer to do stuff" perspective. I think that's ultimately why Windows is so popular. It also helps that you can put together a beast of a machine for about $750. But with that said I would instantly switch to Linux if all of my Linux problems were suddenly fixed. In the mean time, if anyone is interested, I have a bunch of blog posts and videos showing how I set everything up in Windows. It can all be found here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use
- ryan-allen 7y ago
  Check out the VS Code SSH remote, if your internet is good enough or if you have a spare computer lying around, you can develop as if it's 'on the desktop' but you get none of the friction and all of the bare metal speed, I switched from terminal VIM a few years ago and the intellisense makes it worth it. There is a VSVim plugin that is... pretty good if you haven't gone too far down the VIM rabbit hole (my usage was and still is pretty basic).
- bluedino 7y ago
  WSL is one workaround after another
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a pretty good environment to do every day developer things + more. I keep thinking about the eventual replacement for my MacBook Pro. Every time I hear something like this, every time I see MS's open source contributions, etc. I keep thinking about Windows as a replacement. At the top of the list of reasons why that's unlikely to happen is shit like these dark patterns to enforce invasive telemetry. I don't care how good WSL is, I don't want to be spied on or coerced into allowing spyware to run. The rest of the list is mostly: I don't believe/agree with you. I've used chocolataey (ugh), and I don't want to do all of my development in a VM. I recently set up a Win 7 VM to get a small C# library built. Turns out it was easier to build it on my Mac and copy it over. Other than bullshit telemetry and forced updates Let me stop you right there. I'm not going to consider anything with forced spyware and forced updates. Until those are fixed I don't care about the rest.
  - nipinium 7y ago
    > I've used chocolataey (ugh) use scoop instead.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      Chocolatey had so much promise, but it just doesn't deliver. At least in my experience, software tends to be outdated, and the packaging often of dubious quality. There are also multiple packages available for a lot of software, so you don't know which one to choose. Oh, and the Chocolatey website is pretty awful too. I do like scoop, but of course the selection available is much smaller than Chocolatey, at least for now. Come to think of it, it's kind of strange that Microsoft never created a packaging system for Windows (aside from the Store; I mean for non-UWP apps).

sukilot 7y ago

WSL is interesting and fun, but too uncanny valley for Linux development. I stick with VirtualBox.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
I stick with VMM. I won't touch oracle with my friend's 10 foot pole. And if I have to run Windows, its from a Qubes DispVM, with whitelisted network configuration.

non-entity 7y ago

occasionally I'll reinstall Windows for something and use it as a daily driver for a while out of laziness

input_sh 7y ago

> 2019's Stackoverflow report for OS usage put Windows at 49.3% for "Professional developers" with MacOS at 29.2% and Linux at 25.3%. Now expand that over the years and you'll get a clear downward trajectory: 2013: 60.4% 2014: 57.9% 2015: 54.5% 2016: 52.1% 2018: 49.9% 2019: 47.5% That's 12.9% less market share compared to just six years ago. Note that they haven't asked about the OS in 2017 and that the numbers I've found here[0] for 2019 are a few % smaller than yours. I've also used "all respondents" instead of the professional ones because they didn't make the distinction until 2018, but quite frankly, that works in Microsoft's favor since professionals are relying on it even less. [0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019/#technology-_-developers-primary-operating-systems https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019/#technology-_...