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More Devs Now Use OS X Than Linux, Says Survey (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader writes from an article on 9to5Mac: Stack Overflow reports that more developers now use OS X than Linux as their primary OS, and that if the trend continues, fewer than half of all developers will be using Windows next year. The site says it carried out "the most comprehensive developer survey ever conducted," with more than 56,000 coders across 173 countries taking part.
The survey also mentioned more were still developing for Android than iOS -- 61.9% versus 47.5%. However, almost a third of developers are using Swift, which was also the second most loved language after Rust.
The survey also mentioned more were still developing for Android than iOS -- 61.9% versus 47.5%. However, almost a third of developers are using Swift, which was also the second most loved language after Rust.
i said, Windows is equivalent to the incandescent light bulb. Linux approximates the CFL, and OS X could be the LED.
While I was working at MS our entire office used MacBook Pros :). (And wrote Java for Linux... Weird job)
Rampant cognitive dissonance on display in 3... 2... 1...
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Slowly control is wrested from the beast.
Computers are tools, I use the best one for the job. OSX is best for most development tasks. x86 is still cheap power.
The masses are going to use tablets from now on, and that ship has sailed for MS.
..don't panic
I used to be a... rabid(?) Mac fan. Switched to full Linux after Snow Leopard. Still like apple but (1) don't want to pay that much and (2) love the control I have over my OS with Linux. I still think Apple has the best hardware if you're not going to build your own.
For some definition of "developers" that is probably true. In this case, this is "people who use Stackoverflow and self-select in order to respond to survey questions". Their population is heavily biased towards web developers and JavaScript, and 70% are self-taught. So, the needs of most of those people are modest, and their choices tell you little about the quality of a platform. Many of them could probably develop on ChromeOS.
Bullshit
Seriously, I work as a programmer and use Stack Overflow all the time, and I didn't even register that this survey was happening. I'll charitably assume that the SO people running the survey thought the selection bias from only asking their own users was way too obvious to mention in their list of caveats.
Another person that failed statistics. Stay in school, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
*hipster kids who respond to stack overflow surveys
If you could write IOS applications in other platforms like linux or windows.
Hint: OSX runs is BSD based and runs a terminal.
LOL! I keep hearing people, typically hipster/Millennial sorts, going on and on and on about how great Rust is, yet I almost never see them using it for anything serious. I mean, I can go on GitHub and find a shit ton of broken, totally incomplete libraries they've tried to write in Rust. But aside from the Rust project and Servo (which is also written by many of the same people as Rust itself is), nobody is using it successfully.
I can't wait for the Rust fad to finally die out.
To quote Alexander Stepanov, 'money oriented programming'. The money in computer programming was in Java, some in C#, now it is in iOS stuff. The iOS userbase PAYS for software. So, there are now going to be a bunch of swift programmers. I wonder how much this will change the software ecosystem 10 years from now.
mac hardware lets you run all three major OS's (osx + windows + linux) on a single piece of hardware.
also — you get all the commandline UNIX-y goodness + the ability to run Microsoft Word + the ability to run Adobe Photoshop right beside your terminal window.
and it never stops running for some arcane reason after a pkg update.
Apple forces people to use OSX for development.. so I'm kind of surprised this is news. Good on Linux that this is even something to talk about.
Personally, I develop the full application stack and I use OSX for iOS and Linux for everything else. I'm not really sure why Linux feels more efficient, maybe because I grew up with windows.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
For what it's worth: although all my code is running exclusively on Linux, my desktop is a Mac. The reason is that the company's sysadmins only support windows 7 or Mac on desktops. What would you choose?
56K is actually a good size for the survey. The rule of thumb is that if you want to compute relatively accurate statistics from a population of size N, then you should sample a representative subset of N**0.5. The only caveat is that the sampling method should try to avoid biasing.
At 56 million coders that's about N = 2**26, N**0.5 = 2**13 = 8192. So a survey size of 56K is about 7 times overkill, but it doesn't hurt to have more than necessary.
So that's why we've had such a drastic decline in the quality and design of software. 26.2% of this generations programmers are idiots.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I work in a company that develops software that ONLY runs on Linux. Why the fuck do we use OSX for our dev platform? It makes no fucking sense at all.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Another person that failed statistics. Stay in school, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
I was gonna say "whoosh!" but then I reread GP and couldn't tell if it really was a joke, or an honest lack of statistics comprehension.
Nothing posted to
I was surprised by how much of a discount Apple gives for bulk to companies. All manufacturers have discounts, but Apple is kind of notorious for being conservative on that front...
Then I asked a friend who's at the head of a company of a few hundred employees that all use Macbook Pros how much they were paying for them. It wasn't a "little" cheaper. It was drastic (obviously Apple has higher margins, so they can mark them down more...i just never knew they actually did).
Like, marked down enough to be in line with mid range PC hardware.
When I did a PC refresh project at a Fortune 500 to replace older Dell workstations with newer Dell workstations, the engineers didn't want a Dell workstation and asked for a MacBook Pro instead. Drove the project manager from Dell up the wall whenever someone made that request.
If you need to test a website or write a mobile app only a Mac is allowed by VMware to run all the platforms. So get a Mac and virtualize all. Get Windows or Linux and you miss out on IOS and MacOSX.
This will probably be the nail for Visual Studio until someone or MS sues. Remember the patch for VMWare Fusion/ Workstation where they forget to turn off the chock_nonApple()? They quickly patched that
http://saveie6.com/
so much butthurt in this thread.
If you are making money on your development skills, having dual 30 inch displays helps to boost your productivity a bit permanently while only requiring a small investment from you or your employer every several years. OSX supports these setups perfectly by letting you configure arrangement of the monitors and their exact physical layout on the desk, and has a menu bar and dock on every screen, plus multiple monitors can be connected through a single Thunderbolt cable. Windows and Linux don't. If you want power user / developer mindshare this is a must.
So this is the reason why software has become less intuitive less user friendly and less functional.
Because developers have crippled them selves with the same broken base that is mac osx.
where the design mantra is "why do you need that?"
and thus all the software that trickles out form these devs reinforce the ideology of why do you need that? do it this way instead.
and if that way dont work for you will tough apple turtle shell pie for you baby, because it only this way or be abandoned and find your on way (good luck with that)
because there not going to be bothered coding in a functional right click menu or a edit button that performs actual functions.
because why do you need it ?? use the wizard click next and you have oooo perty you dont need to tweak the settings to create something different
besides think different was soooo 1990s and now its actually Dont Think, Dont Create, Don't Do Anything because your expected to be a sheep BAAAAAAA BAAAAA go consume content you freaking sheep
let your media overlords and their barely paid overseas content creation slaves make more content for you to devour... BAAAA BAAAAAAAA
do as they do not as you do .
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
It makes as much sense to write Linux software on Windows as on MacOSX.
The GP didn't say they weren't developers, just that they didn't do a good job representing developers as a whole. The claims is that more developers develop on something, the GP points out that it is really more of a particular subset. His opinion is also that the subset in question isn't likely very good.
It's not a "No true Scotsman," fallacy to say that a subgroup isn't representative of the whole group. For example if you said "All Scottish people are drunks, I mean just look at all of them in this bar," it would not be a fallacy for someone to say "You are in a bar, the people here do not represent all the people in Scotland, this is a small subgroup."
Further, something like a developer isn't just an arbitrary label. You aren't a developer just because you say you are any more than you are astronaut or a plumber or the like. Someone that fucks around with a tiny bit of JS coding a bit in their free time isn't a developer, just like someone who once changed the drain trap on their sink is a plumber. When you talk about professions, there is the idea that you do it, well, professionally.
OS X is the UNIX that large organizations support their employees using. And btw it's nothing like iOS.
I used Linux exclusively for about 12 years. I'm even named in the Linux kernel changelog, so you could say I've long been a fan of Linux. When sold my business and took a 9-5 job with a big organization, I was offered a choice - Windows or OS X. The corporate helpdesk, the active directory services, etc didn't do Linux. Knowing that OS X is UNIX (certified UNIX, POSIX, single UNIX), I chose OS X over Windows.
I don't buy Apple's mobile devices, and didn't much care for the iPad my boss handed me, but that's iOS. Time for me to try OS X.
I was surprised to find that for day-to-day use, OS X is almost exactly like Linux, on a quality machine, with few to no annoyances. It just works. I can download and compile all my favorite FOSS software the same way I always have - ./configure; make; make install. It's just like a well-polished Linux distribution, and it integrates seamlessly with the corporate network.
System administration is a little different, but I haven't needed to do much system administration on my Macs, they just work.
If you like Linux or BSD and you're in an organization that includes Windows desktops, Active Directory, etc, a Mac is a very good fit. Don't let any negative experience with iOS fool you, OS X on a Mac Pro is a powerful UNIX system, and the hardware is well made. (The hardware isn't anything magical, but it's well designed, solid construction, and good performance) .
Another person that failed what, sonny?
There are at least a hundred million coders. Trying to represent all of them from a sample set of fifty-six thousand is bullshit. You haven't even breached 0.1% of the programmer population.
Learn how SCIENCE works, child.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
OSX may be broken, but it can still limp along when Windows is twitching in a ditch and being left behind. Seriously, worst UIs in the world all come from Microsoft. People were using Unix to develop before Gates wrote his first BASIC.
Stack Overflow reports that more developers now use OS X than Linux as their primary OS, and that if the trend continues, fewer than half of all developers will be using Windows next year.
Someone care to enlighten me on the logic here? Where does Windows usage become involved in the OS X vs Linux equation. Or, if they're trying to say people are jumping ship from Win to OS X, why mention Linux at all? Either way, there's one too many OS's mentioned in TFS. Didn't read TFA, because TFS does not compute.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
The rule of thumb is you can beat your wife as long as the stick you use is no bigger than your thumb.
While plenty of commentators have denounced such a rule (including at least two 19th century American judges), it does not appear the rule itself has ever actually existed.
This "regulated spousal abuse" is found nowhere in English (and thus also American) common law. Using any kind of switch, thumb-width or otherwise, to "correct" one's wife has been illegal in the US since at least the Colonial era.
Not to say abuse didn't occur, but there was no rule on the books about it being OK as long as it was carried out with a thin enough implement.
OTOH, the "approximation" sense of the phrase has been in use for many centuries.
Nothing posted to
If the survey is skewed towards web developers, why then are Rust and Swift the most popular languages?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only reason your OSX feels "exactly like Linux" to you is homebrew. ./configure;make;make install !!! man. Wake up!
I have problems writing POSIX compliant code in OSX - there are these little deviations that Apple takes at every turn. OTOH, the hardware is awesome; that's about it. Most of my productive work is on a Linux VM on OSX. I don't buy the OSX is a better development OS (even with XCode; BTW you have CLion on Linux if you are willing to try). Even building Clang/LLVM seems easier on Linux and it's Apple's own project
I recovered data for a die hard mac user. Linux didn't have any problems moving the data, even though the file systems are not native to Linux (I recompiled my kernel to provide support for HFS+), and after using DD to suck data from a dead and dying drive (kicking out an image), pulled apart the image into a pseudo file system. Some of the directories were smashed, so it created its own, some of the names for files were smashed (so it created new names for the files). If the file fidelity was too far gone, it doesn't attempt to recreate anything. I moved a lot of data, but his system had a hard time doing anything with it. Linux could move 14 GB of data in about 20 minutes. The Mac OS took more than 2 hours to do the same. I know Mac users like to click and click instead of type and type, and he noted that I tend to type a lot when using the computer (instead of open/click/click/click), but I can move data very precisely, in one move. He couldn't, and there clearly was a lot of stuff that I could do easily, that he would spend hours doing. I will stick to Linux thanks. (Also at one point he crashed the operating system. What is that?!?)
Do not equate the preferences of a single site survey to that of the entire developer community. At best you have merely sampled people who are pretentious enough to brag in surveys.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
I recently helped a friend troubleshoot their Outlook email client that was using Apple email. This friend spent an hour and a half on the phone with Microsoft and did not get a resolution out of them but still wanted to get paid (friend refused).
I got it working in 15 minutes, but I was appalled at the UI for Outlook. Microsoft used to take interface design seriously - what the hell happened?
Anyway, it's all a moot point now. Their brazen lack of privacy baked into Windows 10 has turned me off of their OS forever. Mac and Linux all the way.
I wonder if the current high level of OS X use vs Linux relates to increasing use of mobile hardware (laptops) by developers. In my experience Linux on mobile hardware is more prone to issues (poor battery life, driver problems, suspend hangups, etc) and regressions after upgrades.
I remember seeing a business that would re-sell Apple computers but not call them such on the order form, just so people could get around a "no Apple" policy at big corporations. You seem to have a similar problem where Linux computers are not supported but your post reminded me of that company.
I don't recall their name and I don't know if they are still in business but it must have been a good business to be in since they seemed to stick around for a few years at least. They offered two kinds of Apple's, the first was untouched, all they did was mask to the corporate powers that be that the person making the computer request was buying an Apple. The second product line was still an Apple computer but with Linux installed, for those that likes the hardware more than the operating system. Either way the purchase order would read something like "Unix based system" and no mention of Apple as the manufacturer.
Pretty sneaky, makes me wonder if I could make a business doing something like that. Maybe resell Apple computers with Windows pre-installed, sounds like there is a market for that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If you are talking about web developers, why would they (a) love using, or (b) even want to use Swift or Rust? Most of them I would think would hardly know what they were.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Uhhhh . . . are you still stuck in the 20th Century?
With the exception of Thunderbolt (which didn't exist ten years ago), I've had had beautiful multi-monitor on Linux for over ten years. Currently I'm running dual monitors with LG 34" curved, Thunderbolt displays.
who claims otherwise has never done any production quality dev work. Apple keeps twisting its toolchain constantly, unannounced and for the most part undocumented. It's a nightmare to automate build processes because every so often the build will fail because of some change Apple introduced in their last ever so frequent updates. And am not even yet talking about the XCode UI which is basically still 15 years back to any other serious code editor.
Carpenters among others can use their thumbs to measure things such as angles. That is the real origin of the rule of thumb.
Mac OS X is better to develop on. Given, they have burned a lot of karma with us opinionleaders and if a new box/laptop was due, I'd be hard pressed to check out some linux option. But the new Macbook would still be attractive.
The reasons are obvious: ... Sad.
Low-level developing on linux is a freakin' mess. Trying to get a simple programm to compile without any hassles was my biggest disappointment in recent years. Maybe the kernel toolchain works fine for those grand-master C wizzards using some cli-centric setup and their deep knowlege of Linux' internal workings, but the simple task of getting a native linux IDE to compile some simple code without crashing or fussing about with bizar behaviour still is a major challange. The only environment that ever actually worked out of the box with me has been MonoDevelop.
Mac OTOH *still* is buy, turn on, works. Yes, you have to jump though a hoop and register with ADC to download Xcode, but as soon as it is installed it works - plain and simple.
The only area where I see potential for Linux as a professional deverlopment plattform is the web. All important browsers work on Linux and the server stack is home turf. But also in this park Mac comes out ahead, with webdevs on OS X actually taking care of web dev and not coming up with a new wizzbang server framework or something.
The web toolchain on Linux is feasible, but still better yet on OS X, with a slew of professional tools that work very well, are notably cheap, don't look or handle like shit and don't fuss around because they need some 32bit version of some obscure lib downloaded off some offbeat apt-source to run without fussing about.
At the same time I've got homebrew, npm, iterm and all the foss goodies at my fingertips, just as I would on Linux, if not better. The OS X Foss camp is prolofic, cause as they don't have to deal with a glitchy foundation, they actually can get stuff done.
As much as I love Linux, it still is a tinkerbox compared to Mac, that is just as much a unix and comes with quite a few FOSS goodies on its own.
We'll see how this plays out in the future, but for now I understand the decline of Linux in this department.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
TFS puts it like Mac took something away from Linux. However, market share for linux remained at roughtly one fifth, even growing by about 1%. So more people had linux, not less. The big loser here is windows, it had 54.5% in 2015, and now it has 52.2%, and next year might be the first year of UNIX on the developer's desktop, with less than 50% windows users.
So in total, its a very good development.
I habe looked through their graphs and my first question was how did they select who to ask? Then I found things that make no sense like where PHP and WordPress where counted as frontend technology like JavaScript. You cannot put them in the same category. WordPress is a platform , PHP is a language with a large set of library functions and there are different web frameworks for PHP. WordPress itself is written in PHP.
But what the final nail in the coffin of this study was the Star Trek vs. Star Wars where Star Wars wins? Really developers choose a fairytale over SF? These are not real developers. No sir.
since the information obviously bears no relation to reality and is easily refuted by download counts.
Given so many people are making or hoping to make lots of money from phone apps, even freetoplay ones, the iPhone is a huge market you can't refuse to pander to. And to pander to them, you need OSX. Because Apple insist. And they can enforce that.
What ought to be produced is some variant of the illegal tying rules for meatspace in the electronic world.
If OSX is actually any good, then people will be using it even if they're not chained to it to pander to the iPhone app market. And if it's not winning, then you now know you need to do something to entice people over rather than just make them put up with the shit.
I know, I know, you like competition, but only in theory, you much prefer not to have to compete in a free and open market.
But while you insist on that, I will flip the bird at the idea that this proves OSX is better than Linux.
I saw this poll, but I just didn't vote since I had no idea how to.
I write software, usually in C++ because that's a universal language suited to everything. Their categories are awful and make no sense unless you're a junior developer working at a web start-up.
You'd bot be able to use OSX. Would you blame Apple? No.
The problem isn't that there's no market, or not enough market, or too difficult a market for Linux support, but that the mindset, promoted and cemented by Windows, is closed source privacy of code, and absolute TERROR over not completely 1000% control of what users do and know about what they've been sold, and that keeps 99% of people away from Linux support. The remaining few aren't enough to dispel the myth that Linux is not capable, is a virus, and is a market that cannot be supported.
The problem isn't the capability of either linux or the market to do this, just the reactionary protectionist MBA-accountant mindset of terror over losing control and being unable to enforce whatever whim you have or may want to have in future.
The techs could do it. Easy.
The "IP" is safe.
The difficulty of the "kernel API changes!!!!" irrelevant.
It's that the few in charge who make the decisions are MBA trained, and such training is accountant led, where it's THEFT not for losing money, but someone else making money where you could (despite not caring, wanting or being able to). Accountants see everything in a zero sum game, therefore if someone else is making money, they must be losing it. Growing the pie, rising the tide, NEVER occurs to them. It's just not part of the MBA or accountant training.
Hell, the need for closed source, even for closed source companies, even, and especially, Microsoft is pretty much past. It's inertia and fear at the unknown and losing control that you had, even when you didn't need that control, that stops the system changing.
Which is why I name it TERROR, rather than just fear. Fear is a reaction that informs and can be controlled, TERROR is fear run amuck and is uncontrolled and does NOT listen to anything.
Yoda was wrong. It's not fear that leads to the dark side,but terror. Because terror doesn't listen to anything but the lizard brain demanding death of the threat so it can go back to sleep and let the higher functions take over.
I use a Macbook Pro for work with Linux, unfortunately I have to dualboot because Goto Assist hasn't got a Linux port and won't work properly in wine. OSX is shit compared to Linux. Remmina, network-manager for vpns and the linux console environment are all reasons to take Linux over OSX. The OSX console is a pain to install addon apps and get a full gnu environment working on. Linux is far better at this than OSX is.
Is that people who use macs tend to fill out more surveys about macs.
I have noticed a swing in that the youngsters ((those below 4 decades of past life) I know are replacing Windows machines with Apple products, so much that with my children and grandchildren Windows OS machines are in minority.
Regards Eion MacDonald
Man it feels good to have the old Slashdot back.
"If we remove the alcoholics, we find out who LIKES to go out drinking that brand of alcohol". If you don't have a choice, how can your practices indicate your choices?
Proclaim it's mere emotion, best is hate against that which you love, because then you don't even have to address the argument, just berate the man.
You can instead shun the App Store and develop web applications that run in Safari. In fact, the original iPhone didn't even have an App Store; the plan was that all third-party applications would be web applications.
We were founded 10 years ago as a software consulting firm, running and pushing Linux. Workstations were built in the office and ran Linux. Laptops were Dell and usually ran Linux.
Last fall, we stopped purchasing Windows machines and building desktops. Now, all new employees get a Macbook Pro. Our owner is a FOSS advocate so that change was hard for him, but the change has been a significant improvement:
LOL@you guys. Seriously.. right tool for the right job. If it works for you, wtf do you care what someone else is doing?
That said... After more than 20 years of using windows and linux, I bought a mac. I love it to death. Its got everything I need as a developer and a user. No more dual booting, no more VM's, but I can if I want/need to. It looks nice and performs well. It seems to do a lot of the stuff i need better (multi-monitor support). *Shrug* - to each his own I suppose.
A more likely result is that of Linux developers, 100% of them use Linux machines and 25% use Mac and BSD, while 50% use Windows. With these kind of surveys, if things add up to 100, then there is something wrong, since developers use many machines.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I use linux even for gaming. So stackwhatea can kiss my ass rofl...
I've worked in IT at 2 software companies now, and the primary reason most of the developers have MacBook Pros is because it allows them to develop for all major consumer platforms. OS X is tied to Apple hardware, so they typically use OS X as their primary OS then run Windows or Linux in Parallels, VMware, or bootcamp.
An added bonus is that they can setup workstations based around Thunderbolt displays in open areas making it easy for teams to organize on the fly. Also OS X, being based on BSD is *nix-esque enough that a lot of their scripts can be developed natively before being tested on the actual *nix OS they're using for production servers.
Some of these Devs don't even like OS X, and spend almost all of their time in full screen VM environments, but they can switch back to OS X easily when they need to.
I think the results of this survey are more driven by OS X's hardware restrictions than as a result of some statement by developers that it's a superior platform.
1. Many years ago, the number of Macs at USENIX Conference outnumbered Linux/Unix on laptops
2. Linux doesn't run on laptops very well at all, issues with drivers. (yes some hardware works but not much choice)
3. OS X is BSD Unix under the hood and almost all Linux software runs on it
4. You can run Adobe & Microsoft apps on Mac as well as all the Open Source Linux/BSD/Unix stuff
5. Parallels & VMware Fusion work very well on Mac, you can connect to vSphere as well
6. Macs can be automated using all those open source tools (yes PowerShell is cool but it's not *NIX)
7. Managing Macs in the IT Enterprise space is surprisingly easy and can save IT a lot of money, Google & IBM are doing it now https://youtu.be/BK9VokNpgzY
8. Most development is web / cloud based and runs on Linux with some Unix
9. Most mobile development is on iOS & Android and a Mac can do both (yes there's Xamarin but that's just evil weird)
10. Windows drives Unix/Linux developers out of their ever loving minds with frustration
It is little wonder why Mac is a developers dream machine. They are no longer a threat at the server level, Linux has won that war. They interact with Microsoft rather well but they really shine in *NIX environments. Since the cloud is running Unix/Linux and Docker is making great strides using Container technology. Running Windows Servers delivering C# Client/Server, Middleware, makes little sense. The whole world is moving to tiny optimized cloud based virtual machines running virtual networking, etc. Linux lets you strip out all the extraneous junk to build a very optimized machine for a single purpose such as a database, email, etc. The savings on wasted RAM/Storage/CPU, etc. is huge. The cloud platforms can burst CPU dynamically, etc.
Every company I've worked for since 2007 has been a Mac shop. My macbook pro from 2007 is still my only laptop. Learn to use OSX at some capacity or fall behind. My newest computer was a Mac rather than get into the Win10 debacle.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
You are confused about the present day state of affairs in the Linux software ecosystem. The typical way to install an app with Linux is dnf install [package_name] or apt-get install [package_name], etc.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Since you don't actually seem to be a troll: You really, really, REALLY should read up on statistics, or just do the mathematics yourself.
Possible bias is an issue, the sample size however is absolutely not (of course having sample size equal to total population eliminates bias issues, but that is nearly impossible to achieve, and a sample size of 80% is not necessarily any less biased than one of 0.1%).
And someone writing SCIENCE in all-uppercase maybe should have a better grasp of the basic tools it relies on.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Objectively, developers who prefer Macs are fucking bad.
I've never worked with a programmer who used Macs that wasn't a total tool, who couldn't code for shit, and wasn't a pretentious dbag.
I don't understand. Where did all the other devs go, the ones who write notebook and desktop applications, where work gets done?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I'm a developer...and I use linux everyday since 2001 as my main system. Looking at my colleges that's a trend that I observe and there are several reasons to use osx instead. Many of them wanted to try xcode and app development and there is only one way to do it: you must have a mac with osx. The other reason was office (yes you heard: ms office). The thing is that here in Portugal our main customers still use a lot of word documents and office is all over the place, unfortunately wine doesn't cover all the needs, so if you want a setup that allows you to program but also handling with a lot of ms documents osx is the answer. In my case I resort to vms with Windows installed) but I admit that resorting to vms is a PITA. The last reason is...well trends :) you see, osx is beautiful and shiny and also the hw and this atracts not only the regular users but developers as well. But all of this doesn't apply to me. I'm still a hardcore linux user and I'm happy with this. I tried osx but I felt like a wale in a small tank. And I always feel this when I need to do some ios app dev. My 2 cents...
MacBook Air.
My immediate reaction was that the survey shows that more and more people consider themselves to be "developers", just because they use computers to manage some content. Not a big deal, and its been going on for decades.
The other side of the coin is that a lot of actual developers find themselves adding a Macbook to their arsenal, simply because its the most convenient way of getting access to Xcode, doing a port to OSX, or compiling something for iOS. This would of course skew the results.
Bottom line - after 30 years of a fight to the death, Unix has won the platform wars. Total victory.
I can download and compile all my favorite FOSS software the same way I always have - ./configure; make; make install.
Give Homebrew a shot. For me, it's the best package manager available. Most OSS can be installed with a quick "brew install ".
If you're used to that, install Brew Cask. It's a package manager for most commercial software and relies on the Homebrew infrastructure. You can quickly install Chrome for example: "brew cask install google-chrome".
With these two combined, it's a great way to write a script that gets yourself up to speed on a fresh OS X install.
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Its seems fine now, but more recent than 10-years ago it definitely still had issues.
I am actually in this boat right now. Although it lists 45% developing for IOS, I need a dev platform I can target both Android and IOS on. I mean, sure I could scrape together a hackintosh, but its just so much easier to drop 400 bucks or so and grab a mac mini. Its unix, I can install homebrew, its fine.
I see you didn't skimp on the Hatorade sauce on your word salad...
1) The phrase "web developer" appears in over 50% of the job roles and web developers use macs - and yes if you use node-mysql you don't count as a full stack developer. 2) ffs 11% of the respondent were students probably with macbooks (40% of my postgraduate compsci students have macs dual booting with windows) 3) These results are from stack overflow, stack overflow does not represent the development community just it own aims and agenda
There is subtle difference between 2 competing open source products
Casteism
But Apple has been sucking the most lately:
http://sudophilosophical.com/2...
Lots of supporting links there. And I don't get the constant claims that Apple has better hardware. It's all the same junk everybody else uses with a premium price. Modern Apple equipment on the high end doesn't even field a competitive GPU for the price range they put it in. Why don't they have anything equivalent to yester-year's high end gaming card, the GTX 970, which is the minimum recommended for Oculus Rift development?
Both Linux and Windows have been stepping up their game lately. Steam's pushing the games on Linux and Linux is handling laptops better now than it ever has. Windows is finally learning to write competent OSes without annihilating performance with 20 years of legacy code dead weight they refuse to let go of and they've finally figured that pissing off web developer for over a decade wasn't doing them any favors in the long run. Apple's primary pro argument, on the other hand, is completely fictional at this point. The OS is de-evolving into an underperforming bug-ridden mess. Their browser is stagnant. Their mobile platform, which is a pain in the ass, can only be developed for on a Mac (how desperate is that?). They don't have the best phones. They don't have the best laptops. Their desktops are a joke for the price you pay for them. I still enjoy the iPad experience more than the Android tablet experience but neither are particularly useful to me since I acquired a Yoga 2 Pro all-in-one that Apple doesn't make, especially not in orange.
I hate to admit it as I always thought of him as an overrated asshole with exceptionally good PR but Apple clearly needed Steve Jobs to kick them in the ass because they are in a slow motion faceplant right now. What's their take on all-in-ones? How do they rate on the ultrabook comparisons? What's their entry into the VR and AR markets? Nada. Zip. Zilch. And their core software lines are in decline as they focus on firing blanks at the next big thing. Their bottom line is no longer tricking Apple fans into paying too much for high quality gear. It's convincing them mediocre gear made by the same Chinese prison-orphan-labor as everybody else's gear is high quality.
Just 56,000 people??? In 170+ countries? That's a low number.. IBM fired more people in one go than that. I never got asked shit nor did my entire Linux group. I think they mean assholes that develop software for a paycheck.... Because we don't get paid to code: it's not our reason for coding.
Vim rulez. (over Emacs at least...)
OS X had me at pbcopy/pbpaste.
There are still weird things that I find Apple does that are annoying. The biggest one recently was basically giving up on NFS/CIFS share support. It takes 1minute plus on my mac mini at home to list a directory on my NAS. Takes 2 seconds on windows or linux.
Every so often, Apple tries to force people to use their protocols or ways of doing things exclusively, and I find that really annoying. It is rare, but like in the case of my NFS example above, there is no fix. The fix was to install linux on my mac mini so I could have network share support again.
And again, little things, like you can't change the global font/menu size of a mac. So as a media center, it sucks. Not a huge use case, I know, but little things like that can't make/break someone's ability to use OSX.
Linux is definitely not as user friendly, and lacks support for a few key apps, but if you don't need those apps, and instead need a solid commitment to 'standards' (like cifs support), linux is better still.
If OSX and linux could take their best features and merge, that would rock.
Jason