4 ms·

I may be totally off base, but my impression is that since around 2000-2003 onward, developers using OS X and Linux became disproportionally influential and tre

I may be totally off base, but my impression is that since around 2000-2003 onward, developers using OS X and Linux became disproportionally influential and trendsetters of sorts. Actually I think the popularization of Macs in the dev world may have played a big part. Linux devs were using git earlier, but especially from the mid-late 2000s onwards Macs started becoming mainstays in tech hub city startups and small companies, and with git working just as well on OS X as it does on Linux it quickly became the standard for that group of devs, which then spread to the larger dev sphere. I remember back in the heyday of Rails, some time around 2012, when Windows users would post in community forums about having trouble getting Ruby, git, etc set up they’d promptly be told to either go install Linux or buy a Mac. In several dev circles around that time Windows users were oddballs.

warner25 3y ago
I share your opinion. I started my undergrad CS program in 2004, and familiarity with a Linux / Unix shell was a de facto expectation. The school and CS department servers that we had to use ran Linux. The tools that we had to use were all open-source, Linux-first. I remember asking for help once and having an upperclassman scoff and say that he couldn't help me, with my Windows machine and GUI, because he just used some command line tool. I don't think I had heard of Linux before that time, and within a few months I realized that I needed to immerse myself by wiping Windows from my laptop and using Linux for all my day-to-day stuff. Many people opted for a Macbook instead because it gave them the same command line interface. So I think that Windows has never been the majority OS among computer scientists and, therefore, developers.