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Windows Loses Ground With Developers
An anonymous reader notes that InfoWorld is covering a survey of North American developers that claims that Linux is gaining share as the number of developers targeting Windows fell 11 percent over the last year. Evans Data has been conducting these surveys of client, server, and Web developers since 1998. Evans Data says that the arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. The big gainer wasn't developing for a Web platform, but rather for Linux and "nontraditional client devices." Windows is still dominant, with 65% of developers writing code for this platform. Linux stands at almost 12%, up from 8% a year earlier. The article says that Evans Data collected information on Mac and Unix development but did not include them in this year's report.
ObSweatTardLink: Developer Music Video
Awesome.
Trolling is a art,
I'm guessing the majority of the applications written to target Linux are server applications. It would be interesting to see if this can be explained by a result only in the server application space, or if more client applications are also being targeted at Linux. Of course, in order to find that out, one would probably have to pay to view the full report.
I know more "indy" developers that code irrespective of the platform. Programming is just different these days - what took an entire staff can now be done efficiently with just a few. Is the market downsizing or has growth in the field shrank or is it more platform agnostic? How do you determine a windows coder vs a universal or only a linux/unix coder?
Windows has some of the best tools out there - software as a whole has matured to a level that there hasn't been anything "new" and its been mostly upgrades. No wonder the market has shifted. Just because there are more developers in other environments, doesn't mean the market has dried up, just that it has matured.
What we're seeing here folks is a diversifying technological ecosystem. Windows does not "fit all", and neither does Linux. (Though arguably, Linux does fit lots more than Windows does)
Linux will never replace Windows, because nothing else ever will. Windows is an artifact of a time when having a single platform was more important for development than having the best platform. Now that the industry is maturing, the needs are rapidly becoming commodities behind standards-based interfaces (TCP, XML, etc) while the platform itself is becoming less and less relevant. The Internet met a need that Microsoft simply couldn't provide, and now the cat is out of the bag. Vista is Microsoft's attempt to lock users in before erosion gets too bad, and it's pretty evident how well that's going.
Windows' market share will slowly erode, slowly being beaten by an increasing number of products, services, and wares on an increasing number of platforms.
Go standards!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Embedded Linux is growing like chuff, and has been for some time. Around 3/4 of Linux jobs on my preferred job site are now for embedded, and for damn good money aswell!
/.] point, let people hack around with source and they'll do amazing things. Keep it all locked up in a nice blue box and what do you get? A bunch of crap smartphones which aren't clever. Meh.
Surely that's the [regularly stated on
Was it the same 400 developers surveyed? A 12% increase in Linux could mean more Linux developers or it could just mean less Windows developers. If I carefully pick my 400 to survey I could post a completely legit survey showing that OS2 is making a comeback. I hate survey's like this, unless the sampling pool is static is means absolutely nothing.
Javascript? Thats just one step up from HTML as far as "development" goes, of course it has 3 times the users, unlike Perl, Ruby and Python all you need is 24 hours and a dummies book.
This is really just the nature of business. Microsoft probably doesnt see this as a real issue for concern.
Windows is satrated with third party apps. Anything you do for windows will most likely compete with someone elses program and you will have an uphill battle to get adoption. Linux there is a huge gap of programs that it needs allowing programmers a better chance to get a good foothold as a key app. Or the more ambition the next killer app. Making software for windows will either be medocre at best (In terms of sales) or if it is a really good app Microsoft will make a clone of it and imbed it into windows so you don't have a chance of competing, or discredited for some other application. Linux apps have a better chance of getting some staying power and your new app may get some ground.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I assume that by "nontraditional client devices" they mean embedded platforms. If so, then this really isn't surprising, or even really all that noteworthy at all.
There continues to be a vast increase in the number of embedded chips capable of running a full-fledged OS (like Linux) and as the chips get smaller, the of course get put into more things. Not only does Windows CE not support a lot of these chips, but even if it did no one in their right mind would use windows for something that didn't need a GUI. The only time to even consider using WinCE is in a PDA like-device, and thats a very small percentage of the embedded market.
How about a survey of platforms? I'd like to see a comparison that includes not just the various OSes, but the web. I suspect the web browser/server is the real growth application platform.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
it, linux, microsoft, chairthrowing, developersdevelopersdevelopers (tagging beta)
Why target one platform or another except in very specific cases? Use Java, Python or Perl (as a last resort! :)) and make it cross platform.
(74 - 64.8) / 74 -> 12.4%
By day, I code in WTL, Win32API and (regrettably) MFC. Like a great many, I wonder whether .net is pushing developers away from Windows.
This mess is drawing Microsoft's attention away from the C/C++ layer, where it's sorely needed, and into what, as far as I'm concerned, is comparable to Visual Basic. Put simply, neither my employer nor I are interested in writing in a proprietary, bytecode-interpreted language. If we have to abandon our C/C++ investment, it certainly wont be for a proprietary java knockoff. It will be for the real thing, allowing us to slowly drift away from Windows.
It's the target platform that matters in my view, if they took this into account I'm sure that linux would be a lot higher, because it would count all of the Web 2.0 people who are hosting on Linux but write in windows.
They had 74% then whatever that total was declined by 12%. They didn't lose 12% of ALL developers, only the ones they had.
.124 or 12.4%
1-(.648/.74) ~=
Talking about basic math....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent
DAMN 11% in one year?! Personally I don't know how reliable their survey was, but being an ASP.NET developer (I assume that would be included for Windows), that scares me a little bit. I'd love to program for Mac or Linux; I do .NET 'cause that's the work I can get right now, but I don't want to become obsolete.
Being trained to administrate an AIX 4.3.3 box here lately doesn't help... Talk about a triceratops enema!
The way Microsoft ended Vb6 with no easy upgrade path to .net both irritated developers here and stranded some of them in vb6 with no path to .net. Some of them trained to java (tho they would have preferred .net).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I wonder how this survey counts web applications with a browser front end and a mysql/php backend or applications written in java as well as other software development that is purposely not targeted for any specific platform? It is heartening to see linux gaining share but more and more it is possible to code not for a specific platform but rather to requirements in a platform agnostic manner.
The Matrix is real... but I'm only visiting!
Congratulations! I didn't think it could actually be possible to write something worse than your parent.
ubiquitous, even on mobile[linux] devices. As a Java Application Architect I care very little about what my infrastructure is, so long as it's not WebSphere. Mobile linux and Netbeans work _very_ nicely together. I can even whisper sweet nothings to Active Directory with my LDAP powers.
Give me the Toaster-based BSD and a jre higher than 1.4.2 and get out of my way!
Website Hosting
For mainstream and corporate software, Windows may continue to rule, but the biggest leaps I've seen in development have been in the niches where Linux has prominence. Audio, networking, manufacturing and server-side work is booming for Linux.
In a perfect world, this article would distinguish between development "for pay" and all development.
technical writing / development
Developers! Developers! Developers! De-- hey where'd everybody go?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Really not that surprising, since every other device runs on embedded linux. Everything from handheld GPS devices, electronic locks, routers, switches to satellite receivers/decoders runs on embedded linux now. It's cheapest embedded platform.
TFA said that PHP usage has increased 3x. Web Applications are going to comprise the majority of business applications in the future. This is where management-types seem to be headed with everything. We are replacing CUFS (monolithic UNIX finacial database app used at many Big Ten schools) with a web-based solution. Electronic Medical Records systems are also mostly web-based.
What would have been done with Visual Basic 6 in 1998, is now being done with PHP/.NET/JSP and Ajax technologies. These technologies (on the server-side) are pretty platform agnostic. The future of the client platform, is the web-browser. Microsoft knows this. It is why their standards compliance is horse-shit. If 60% of webbrowsers (w3wschools.org) are IE6/7, people will continue to develop for it as the primary platform. I can't even access my bank-account outside w/o IE. Microsoft is going to continue with their own standards, know matter how much developers bitch, because it fuels their O/S sales and marketshare.
I like coding in Java. Especially now that it's been GPL'd.
No, it's a 3 percentage point increase, but that's still an increase of 34%. Suppose the sample size was 1000 developers, then change was from 88 developers to 118. That's a 34% increase.
I'm afraid you just failed basic math. What you describe is a three percentage point increase. Consider it this way. There were 88 linux developers, now there are 118 linux developers, which is a 34 percent increase. That applies whether you started with 8.8%, 8.8 people, 88 companies, etc
Meanwhile, the entire POSIX spec, suitable for fully implementing a POSIX system including the utility apps, with commentary and rationales for design decisions, fits in about two and a half feet of binders.
Intellisense is practically mandated if you want to work with an interface as baroque as Win32. And it's nice even when you're working with your own defined classes and structures. But it has its own drawbacks, as Petzold notes:
I develop for many platforms at work. It's a core part of my job. I mostly enjoy writing code for Unixish platforms, and tolerate the Windows stuff. The APIs on Unix are small, well-thought-out, have few if any side effects, and tend to be thoroughly documented. I find very few interfaces on Windows have even a majority of these traits, let alone all of them.
I've rarely felt the need for more debugging support than Linux comes with. The problems tend to be simpler and more easily uncovered. Eclipse is nice, and appears to take many of the good things about Visual Studio and leave much of the bad behind. For some projects, it's very useful. For others, it's overkill.
Another item worth reading - the whole book, really - is The Art Of Unix Programming. For a Windows developer's perspective on the book, see here. Needless to say, I don't agree with everything he writes there, but you might find it interesting.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Another point is that Windows is losing developers.
.NET for IIS that is Windows dev for the time being (we'll see how Mono will do). Because you are using the web for you GUI doesn't mean that your code isn't running under windows...
And yes, if you code
... If they sue the same developers that program on their platforms. I will never develop for a closed platform like Windows which such EULAs, NDAs and whatever else license they put... you never know with what will they come up next in their licenses.
Personally I do Java and love it. I have programmed in C# (Visual studio 2005 I think) and I prefer Eclipse, for production (read, real enterprise applications) environments.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The quantity of developers increases by 34%. A percentage is a ratio, so let's multiply by 100 to get pretend quantities:
8.8 developers + 8.8 developers * 0.34 = 11.8 developers
The percentage of developers increases by 3%:
8.8% + 3% = 11.8%
I think the frame of reference (quantity or percenage) is usually chosen carefully to provide the most (or least, depending on the intent of the article) dramatic effect.
11.8 - 8.8 = 3.0
.34
percentage of developers on Linux now - percentage of developers on Linux a year ago = percentage of developers who switched to Linux
3.0 / 8.8 =
percentage of developers who switched to Linux / percentage of developers on Linux a year ago = percentage of Linux developers who switched in the last year
So, the number of Linux developers increased by 34% in the last year.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Simply randomly picking 400 doesn't necessairily do a good job either, especially if it really isn't random. One big problem with many surveys is they are self selecting to a large degree. The survey company sends out paper surveys or makes calls. While they may do so in a truly random to stratified random fashion, the people that elect to respond may not be a random subset. For example, suppose that Linux developers are much more likely to want to evangelize their choice. We certainly know that minority platform supporters are extremely vocal as a whole (you see it here daily on Slashdot). So perhaps they call 4000 developers, and only 10% elect to respond. However of that 4000 developer set, only 50 (1.25%) are Linux developers. However all but two elect to respond. That would give the 12% result reported, yet be grossly inaccurate of the overall picture.
I'm not saying that is what happened, but simply saying "Well we called a random sample," doesn't cut it since you are dealing with self selection. Likewise, if you try to control for that and screw up the way you pick your sample you can bias it yourself.
This is not an easy thing to deal with, and pollsters fuck it up ALL the time. Witness the Family Guy fiasco. Fox canceled it because their numbers said people weren't watching it. DVD sales proved that their numbers were full of shit, they just hadn't been measuring most of the demographic that did watch it properly.
TFA seems to be saying that there is a smaller *percentage* of people working on Windows as compared to other things:
"Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006."
That does *not* automatically mean that the number has declined. There may still be the same number of or more Windows developers, but their percentage is smaller because the other categories have increased.
I hate misleading article titles. The numbers should be thought of as multiple line graphs, not a pie chart.
If I am going to spend the time and effort to write a piece of commercial software, then I am probably going to want to make money off of it. Linux users in general don't like to pay for applications so there would be no way I would write a client application for Linux. Windows Administrators are leery of server applications without an installed user base, so I would tend to avoid writing server applications for the Windows platform (as a start-up mind you).
...because guess what, neither of them are going away in the near future so you might as well be proficient at both.
That being said, why limit myself to one platform? It would only be a smart business decision to code for both. Hey, what do you know...I work for a company that currently does that. It's like Windows users that refuse to use Linux "because it's too complicated", or *nix users who refuse to use Windows "because of (monopoly/commercialism/shady business practices/insert random slashdot whine here)".
If you limit your target, you only limit your market and earnings potential. That's just stupid from a business perspective.
Cobol is niche, and like a lot of niche languages, if you don't know it, it's not going to limit your job prospects very much. I haven't polished my FORTRAN in a decade, and I don't really miss it. I feel the same way about VB6, and ASP.NET I view to be on the same level. C# I still use, just because it's no mental stretch to shift back and forth between it and Java. But the day when I don't need C# anymore, I'll dump it into the mental dustbin with FORTRAN, SCHEME, PASCAL, and VB6.
And the fact that that day is getting nearer should scare the shit out of Microsoft. They absolutely depend on people being forced to learn their stuff, they absolutely depend on IE-only apps driving IE marketshare (and windows marketshare along with it). When no coder ever needs to learn C# or ASP.NET, then they will have truly become irrelevant to the internet.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
With the growth of web-based development I found that .NET was a big step sideways for M$. The problem being that the .NET IDE tried to make building a web app a lot like building a desktop app. You are no longer intimate with your code and depend too heavily on generators and libraries. Unless you're a newbie as web development it's a big hindrance.
Troll
...but simply saying "Well we called a random sample," doesn't cut it since you are dealing with self selection....
How does it deal with self selection? If you post a "survey" on the internet, the respondent's are very likely to be self selected and sensitive to the issue. If you post a query about Bush pardoning Libby on a Limbaugh website, you can readily predict the outcome. That is self-selection. If you have someone pull phone numbers for developers and create a blind list from which to randomly draw a sample and ask what platforms they develop for, there can be no self-selection except with respect to a willingness to be interviewed.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Is windows doomed as a development platform? Nope, it still has some of the best and most mature development tools around - It still has the largest market share as an OS, etc.
We have been using Visual Studio and related tools for quite a while, but have realized that the various license fees, etc. do not justify us using the Windows platform as our only dev platform - we will continue to support it as long as we have paying clients
FTA: "The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse." I think that Vista actually hurt the numbers. Not so much Vista itself, but in Microsoft's post-launch execution. Microsoft's big developer hotness is supposed to be all these great .NET technologies. But the lack of Vista adoption might be putting the brakes on developer enthusiasm because Microsoft is failing to lead the way in showing the end result benefits of it.
COM didn't really catch on until Microsoft started demonstrating how hot it was through dogfooding and releasing applications architected on it. With it came a greater degree of modularity and flexibility that they demonstrated compellingly well with IE, Office, Visual Studio, etc.
To this day, Microsoft hasn't delivered any real WPF+WCF applications - at least none that a significant number of people care about. They should be pumping out amazing applications that can be showcased on Vista, causing developers to envy and copy them, and causing customers to actually want Vista because of the hotness the developers *and* Microsoft are offering.
That's true, but that's not what TFA said. Here's the quote again in case you missed it the first time I posted it, "The targeting of Linux by developers increased by 34 percent..." It did not say that the number of Linux developers increased by 34%, it said the number of developers. So either the reporter is intentionally misleading the public or can't do basic math. I suspect it's the former, since 34% is much more impressive than 3%.
P.S. Incidentally, what I have said really is true, regardless of what the slashdot mods seem to think of the situation (if their modding me into oblivion is any indication). And btw, this is not a slight to linux, I run a completely linux and mac shop, it's just a plea for truth in reporting.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Yes, you have to recompile the C++ for the different OS's, but Java Swing is everywhere -- Windows, OS-X (yeah, yeah, true believer Mac people don't like the way Swing apps look), Linux.
If I am going to leave Windows, I am going platform-independent rather than down the path of the flavor-of-the-month-GUI (cough, cough Qt, GTK). Yes, there is some degree of platform independence with those other things, but Java is everywhere these days. Much less futz factor having the target GUI layer available on other machines. There is a near universal expectation of having Java installed on network-share systems where I don't get to install those other things.
I have been developing software for fun since I was younger.
I never develop *exclusively* for Windows (i.e. Visual Basic, Visual C++) anymore, given that Java and text-based apps with source code can run on more platforms.
It's simply a matter of market share: the more operating systems your program can run on, the better. Java and open-source text-based apps win hands-down in that department. The Microsoft "monopoly" is gone. (I never believed it was a true monopoly, more like a matter of personal preference and convenience, which changed with Mac OS X and easier Linux.) It's a cross-compatible world now, and Microsoft is becoming irrelevant unless they change their business model.
Because most of the Windows defectors I know have gone to OSX.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Java has really matured. Its VMs are very fast, on par with C/C++, the language offers excellent facilities like generics, Eclipse is quite a good IDE (not the best, but quite good, especially if you get used to its intricacies), there is a huge community and the SDK is excellent.
So why code specifically for Windows? we have nothing to gain from a Windows-only application. We write our apps in Java, we pay attention to platform specific details, and most code runs as is in Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS.
But not surprised. In the last few years Microsoft has increasingly taken a "My way" or the "High way" approach to software development. Like many others I work as a full-time software developer for many years now and these day's building a working solution is the easy part. The hard part is to make sure it runs at a customers site. The very thing Operating systems are supposed to enable.
The hack and slash security patches Microsoft brings out these days often unexpectedly denies features in the API on which solutions are based thus rendering large chunks of our code useless and a workaround must be found.
Security is important in a connected world and indeed not recognised enough my many programmers but the hap hazard ducks and dives in Windows makes it hard to tackle this issue in a structured way. Often I find myself hacking my way around "Security patches" in order to restore functionality in our software.
Add to that this crazy program (I refuse to call it an operating system) called Vista which is is so secure you hardly can run anything on it. I imagine the next version of Windows is 100% secure as it will only run "Notepad" and "Calculator"
So, bottom line. If the Operating System no longer allows us to use the hardware to drive our programs then the OS get's in the way. For me the problem is that I have a huge skill base in Windows and my programming tools that I don't like to give up. But for some of my projects I seriously consider to try my hand at Linux so I can provide a turnkey solution (Include the OS with the software).
MS Windows has become like a government. It is supposed to serve but instead it now insists to rule the IT world.
Those developers answered a questionaire, stupid.
I think this raises the question of who really has control of which OS has the dominant market share, the developers, or the consumers. I'm going to go with the consumer on this one, no consumer means developer goes out of business, no developer means consumer goes elsewhere. Elsewhere appears to be Microsoft; just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean that "OMG Microsoft won't be the number one operating system in a matter of years! GO LINUX!"...Why can't most enthusiasts just realize there are advantages to different platforms and leave it at that, don't turn software into a religion. Admittedly I usually stand up for Microsoft because they are usually the ones hated with the most passion, but my desktops run on Windows (XP, Vista), my server runs on Linux. I also vastly enjoy open source, but that doesn't mean that I like running an open source operating system on my desktops. I think maybe the survey lacks that understanding with some of the developers.
Visual Studio fills a lot of gaps, for the day to day needs. My problem has been that sometimes the Sales staff have gotten a contract in which .NET does not like; For example XML preprocessing statements in a XML output from a .NET Web Service. Web 2.0 applications security could be increased greatly if this were allowed. But it was solved by using Notepad, that I was able to side step this issue. That is when software engineering begins. I am glad I know both.
What's the point of polling North American developers?
The 11% decrease in Windows targeting could be because one of the 9 still working here switched to Linux.
How do you determine a windows coder vs a universal or only a linux/unix coder?
All but the Linux/unix coders have bags under their eyes.
Just because there are more developers in other environments, doesn't mean the market has dried up, just that it has matured.
The proportion of Windoze only developers just lurched 11% down to 65%. Give it a year or two and they will be less than 50%.
What's surprising is that they could find so many in 400 developers. GNU has owned the web for a while and now owns embeded systems. Student and small business users would be clueless or crazy to do anything but download a Linux distro to make things work because of the cost and performance differences. The way M$ calls developers "pawns" and the way they have put the smack down on the largest "competitors" you have to wonder why even those people would be Windoze only. In the Windoze world, you have to pay to play and M$ will steal the pie if you make anything.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It might be but with a sample of "400 developers and IT managers in North America"
there is just far to small of a sample that the margin of error is probably well over 20%
Also where and how where these "developers and IT managers" sampled.
At a Microsoft Developers conference?
Most Linux developers I know are broke and living on almost nothing but air. Many are student, very green (save the environment) or have some other oddness like being idealistic or so focused on Cool stuff they forget that they need to have an income.
Odds are that these guys did not get surveyed.
With only such a small sample, I don't give much weight to the results.
Also it take about 10 Windows developers to get the same work accomplished as one Linux developer.
Most windows development is dealing with Bugs, Features, bad documentation and changes from Microsoft rather then with real forward progress.
I'd love to know what they think developers are moving over too? Cross platform stuff like Ajax, TCL, PHP and Java? Cross platform C++ and C? Much of the application layer stuff I work on tends to be platform Agnostic like that. The rest is Kernel and Drivers that are every OS specific, although I even did 2 drivers that were windows and Linux cross platform. It even worked to my own amazement.
John
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Developing code with the GPL version of QT (note that the code being developed need not itself be GPL'd) and later purchasing the commercial version as a drop-in replacement just before product shipment was explicitly disallowed last time I looked into QT.
Not only did that not make the slightest bit of sense ("hundreds of different os'"?), it wasn't even a haiku. Haiku's are 5-7-5.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
gtkmm is a nice C++ inteface to GTK+ if you want to code in C++ and GTK+.
A whole article on statistics, yet no where does it say what is the confidence level. Is the percent error +/- 10% ? If so, then this is a bogus story. Since it doesn't bother to even say, then this reporting is rubbish. Where's your love for mathematics, Slashdot editors?
I'm just starting to develop a java app for websphere so your remark got my attention. Could you explain it a little bit please?
I would buy software for linux. But only for needs I have which free software does not already fill. Hence, no ftp programs and the like.
BUT... the big problem is, if there is a free alternative, I'll take the free alternative first. Windows users do the same or they often pirate (at home). The difference is that Linux has a ton of decent software for free. And that linux users used to be more technically apt so they could make their own small utilities. This freezes a lot of small time Windows users out who used to make small programs and make a healthy living off of them. Programs for Linux can't be so simple.
The other problem is that a lot of software for Windows are only made to make up for the built in unnecessary deficiencies of Windows - adaware, windows start-up monitor, registry cleaners, etcetera. Linux has less deficiencies and it also generally does what the user tells it to without overwriting settings on whim. So that market is out.
Another problem is an easy installer for Joe Average (no CLI) but without package management. I think Click-n-Run, when ported to Ubuntu later this year by Linspire, will offer a great opportunity for non-free software - for the first time on a widely popular distro software can be PURCHASED easily.
I think there is opportunity for nonfree apps on Linux, but the market is different and one has to recognize that. One such software would definitely be turbotax or an alternative. Another would be something like an eBay Blackthorne (auction management software).
There are niches to be filled, to be sure - and I think a lean, enterprising developer will be able to take advantage of it. With click-n-run on Ubuntu, Ubuntu on Dells, etcetera - the situation is shaping up soon where some business can be made. The market for Linux is smaller, but that ecosystem is not yet saturated by developers either - so there are advantages/disadvantage either way you look at it.
As well, all three major platforms (OS X, Linux, Windows) can be programmed for simultaneously with a toolkit like Qt - so the risk does not have to be taken while the same advantages gained.
While the overall population of programmers may be shifting slowly away from Windows, the shift new developers coming out of school is much more dramatic. My company (Pando Networks) ships an application on Windows, Mac and Linux, and when we recruit new developers from school we see ZERO experience with Windows development coming from the universities. Schools are completely focused on modern, portable languages (e.g. Java, Ruby), and they're writing mainly "web apps", so few students have more than a passing acquaintence with C++, a few played with .Net on servers, and none have written a "Windows app". If our experience is typical, I'd say that MS has completely lost the next generation of softare developers.
.Net server software are less tied to Windows than they would have been if they were writing a Win32 client/server app.
From the corporate IT perspective, I think that this also the case. IT would rather implement Web apps, which are easy to deploy and support. So while the developers might use Windows computers on their desktops, and perhaps as the servers, that doesn't particularly affect the software - Java, PHP, etc., are effectively the same on all platforms. And even the developers writing
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I would be running a 3 year old PC if I could get one to last that long. The laptop I had before this one lasted 25 months. The one before that lasted 12, died just after the warranty. I think it is a conspiracy to make me pay more windows tax.
As for running Pentium 1 systems I guess that is fine if the systems are not windows machines or if those machines don't surf the internet. I don't think those systems would run windows xp very well and their are unpatched holes in the older versions of windows that are no longer supported by Microsoft.
I'm guessing the majority of the applications written to target Linux are server applications.
;-), Acidrip, Mplayer, Banchee, mtp Libraries for the Zen etc.., Myth, Astrisk, Ekiga, Bittorrent, Network Manager (Wireless support.. WooHoo), the list goes on..
Open Office, Ghostscript (all in one priners are getting support), Q-Light, Gimp, Kstars, Flash 9 for Linux, Non-free codecs
If you have a Ubuntu box, when is the last time you did an update? Everytime I do an update, I see lots of evidence of programmers at work on Linux.
The truth shall set you free!
In a year or two, Windows may be less than 50% of the Web also
M$ has a hard time getting more than a third of the web and their expansion is capped. Only terminal M$ partners run M$ web servers. Ventures into M$ hosting have met disaster and DIY types will always use some kind of free software. What do you mean when you say Windows may be less than 50% of the web?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Clueless M$ user Macthorpe is confused by hosting and dreams of a M$ dominated web. By M$ hosting disaster I mean companies that tried to sell web hosting all bellied up. Your little partial quote of the top twenty web sites does not bring the results you want either (an old list). You can add up all of the M$ sites and barely beat either Yahoo or Google but not both. AOL does not use M$ . When you add them, youtube, wikipedia and other great GNU powered sites, M$ quickly vanishes. When you include the traffic from all the smaller sites, there's no contest at all.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Macthorpe reveals his motive for self torture:
There will always be people like me who will carry on using Microsoft because we prefer it. It's just a bonus that it irritates people like you.
Classic fanboy.
AOL's web mail is probably the only way they can work with M$ mail clients, if anything from M$ ever works. Of course it's mediated by aol.com and none of those other sites or servers show up on the list, so what's your point again? That web use is dominated by M$ servers?
Also, your little M$ hosting service also has another tab called "hosting" which offers the same features for less money. I'm not sure how they can continue offering M$ servers where everyone else doing the same lost their ass.
Face it - non free is not competitive. M$ share is going to do nothing but shrink.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They renamed it WXWidgets.. and yes, it really is "super-cool". Especially with Code::Blocks and the new wxSmith stuff.
-metric
How many people use 3 year old PC's
;-), there is little reason to replace a 3 year old computer. Software apps and computers have exceeded the demands of general home and business users many years ago.
Most. Unless you are a hard core gamer with generous parents, or the less common job