I posit that Microsoft has more to do with this trend than anything else. I was a Windows / Microsoft tools only developer for many many years and only recentl

I posit that Microsoft has more to do with this trend than anything else. I was a Windows / Microsoft tools only developer for many many years and only recently switched to Javascript / Node.js and OSS tools for our business applications. My usage of S.O. almost exactly parallels what you see in that graph over the time period and I'm personally aware of a great many other Windows developers moving away from it recently. The reason for myself has absolutely nothing to do with Joel or Jeff and everything to do with Microsoft pushing out the smaller professional developers who supported them and by extension Windows for decades in favour of policies that benefit only the very big software shops and students / dabblers and then recently with Windows 8 basically giving us all the final push away in many, many different ways. As for your last sentence; as a professional software developer of well over 20 years who 'goes near' Windows programming and everything else I can get my hands on I can't fathom how anyone can take pleasure in less opportunity and a smaller market and fewer interesting platforms to work with.