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.

Comments

for some definition of "developer"

[ooloorie]

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.

Re:in an attempt to explain this to others....

[Gadget_Guy]

The summery says OS X which is for desktops and laptops IIRC. iOS is for iShiny.

The summary also says that it is developers that were surveyed. These are people who do not have to use the operating system for which they are developing. So... iOS is the reason that they use OS X.

duh

[bananaquackmoo]

Hint: OSX runs is BSD based and runs a terminal.

Re:duh

[Moridineas]

Hilarious post.

SystemStarter came from Next (afaik--or at least the crazy earliest versions of OS X) and has been deprecated for something like 12 years (it was started by init, btw). The current initial/cron/systemd type daemon is launchd. Did I mention that launchd is open source and has been ported to FreeBSD? I dont know a ton about systemd, but it seems similar—if more expansive—than launchd.

If you don't like the BSD-style utilities, you can always install gnu versions. See brew, macports, etc.

Darwin is open source.

Re:duh

[Darinbob]

I'm a developer. I do not want to be the sysadmin for my own machine. It wastes too much of my time. Now granted I do have to do it from time to time on my Mac at work, but it's far simpler than trying to deal with fixing problems in Linux. I used to be a Unix sysadmin, later I used Linux a lot, but these days Linux is just too complicated. Even worse if you have xubuntu or kubuntu so that all of the web searches only give you solutions that work for ubuntu.

And you can get Mac Ports to put other tools on the Mac easily.

If you're forced to have an enterprise machine by the corporate ideology, would you want Windows with a slow and clumsy Cygwin or a native Unix that can run native tools? No, the enterprise people probably won't let you have Linux unless it's a second machine.

because you can still run linux

[johnrpenner]

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.

Re: because you can still run linux

[ljw1004]

And on a mac laptop, sleep and hibernate and resume always work.

Re:because you can still run linux

[afidel]

and it never stops running for some arcane reason after a pkg update.
No, just wireless, or CIFS, or some other subsystem breaks or performance goes to shit. I was amazed at how many issues the 15 OSX users at my last company managed to encounter (I was the datacenter manager but I got pulled in as senior troubleshooter since we were only a 40 person IT shop). I'm now at a global 5,000 person firm and we have hundreds of OSX users and they definitely create more than their share of tickets, not sure if that's a result of the OS or the userbase but frankly it doesn't matter to me as it still results in more work for me per supported user. I think OSX is an OK OS and have taken on a Macbook Air as my work laptop, partly because it's light and partly to make myself more familiar with OSX so I can better support my users, but people who think OSX is some magical panacea are delusional, it's still a complex OS written by human programmers so it's still going to have its share of bugs.

Re:in an attempt to explain this to others....

[maugle]

I doubt it, because both developers I know who own Macbooks have installed Linux on them.

Re:in an attempt to explain this to others....

[BronsCon]

Except that the summary also says that more people develop for Android than for iOS.

Re:in an attempt to explain this to others....

[fluffernutter]

Wow.. even with the glitches I experience from time to time in my Linux desktop it still doesn't quite match the cheese grater to the testicles I feel when I use OSX. Like seriously, force people to mouse to the top of the screen every time they want to use a menu function?? The 80's are embarrassed they never caught on.

Ummmm, no you have it wrong

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:in an attempt to explain this to others....

[Gadget_Guy]

Except that the summary also says that more people develop for Android than for iOS.

Developing for Android does not mean that you don't use OS X. In fact, if you want to target both iOS and Android then the best solution is a Mac. Yes, you can't write for iOS on other platforms, but that will be a small minority.

Re:in an attempt to explain this to others....

[Bert64]

If you develop for iOS then you will almost certainly (or must?) be using OSX to do so...
If you develop for Android you have a choice of platforms.
If you develop for both you might as well run OSX because the android tools run just as well on there, plus if you're employed as a developer you can justify an expensive mac over whatever bottom of the barrel junk you'd have got otherwise.

Re: in an attempt to explain this to others....

[Hognoxious]

I've bought 4 for my employees in the last year. They're gently used (scratches on bottom for instance) but who cares?

Where I work, everyone is expected to wear pants.