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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)
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
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.
If you could write IOS applications in other platforms like linux or windows.
Hint: OSX runs is BSD based and runs a terminal.
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.
Some people are helpless regardless of what OS they're using. They require constant care and feeding even if they are using an Apple tablet. Even Apple products won't "save" those kinds of people. They are entirely hopeless.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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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.
On my iPad: all free apps
On my Android: $150 in paid apps
My wife? All free apps on both platforms. That's 1 for android and 0 for iOS.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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) .
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
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 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
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.
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.
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.
Would it be better if they started enforcing gender and race quota for commits?
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
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:
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!
This is why anecdotes are not always as valuable as those who refer to them might believe they are. There are many, many sources for the numbers that show that people buy more stuff on iOS than they do on any of the others. They've been referred to, cited, and even given formal studies. You and your wife would be statistical anomalies. It's okay, I understand. I own, and like, a Windows phone and have all of the applications I can possibly want in the store. I'm pretty sure I can't use my experience to extrapolate what the rest of the world is doing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
So you own every app in the store, then? I kid, of course. But not really.
You see, my point was that Android users make purchases, as well; that I was also able to highlight a couple of iOS users who do not, well, that was just icing. It's also true that Android users are more likely to make in-app purchases, so any study that only refers to purchased apps, well, that study is flawed. I haven't seen one yet (admittedly, I haven't looked) that compares both types of purchases, so I'm genuinely curios how that would pan out.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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
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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
> So you own every app in the store, then?
Oh yes, all three of them!
Actually... Err... No. No, I don't. To be a bit more clear, I don't really want to do a bunch of things with my phone. But there are plenty of apps. I don't see a bunch of repeats in there like I see with Google and Apple.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I hope you didn't really miss the joke...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Some people are helpless regardless of what OS they're using. They require constant care and feeding even if they are using an Apple tablet. Even Apple products won't "save" those kinds of people. They are entirely hopeless.
Oh, you are SOOOO right!
And they're the first ones to whine "I thought Macs were supposed to be EEEE-ZEEE..."
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.
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