alt Hacker News> in windows terminal
This is an aside, but I'm really struck by how many people on HN use Windows (based on repeated mentions I've seen in comments). I've worked for a pretty wide range of companies over the last decade and only one, maybe two companies even had any people that worked on Windows machines. I haven't worked at a company where devs used Windows in 15 years (and even that company eventually switched to linux).
As I've gotten deeper into LLMs/AI roles even Macs have seemed to start having equal share compared to devs running full Linux setups.
Is this just a sign of that a larger and larger portion of HN users are working for large corporations? I honestly can't even remember that last time I saw a serious developer pull out a Windows laptop.
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I've been a developer for more than two decades. I've worked at four employers during that time, and all of them had significant fractions of devs using Windows. Not vouching for the idea that any of them are "serious" though. I've never worked at a prestige employer or FAANG or anything. Just boring businesses of different sizes. Some are software, and some just do software. But Windows has always been everywhere.
I work in games. Everyone, and I mean _everyone_ uses windows with visual studio.
If you work at a company with well over a hundred employees, you're likely to see at least half of them on windows and devs may get an option of Windows or Mac... and IMO, Windows + WSL + Docker is actually slightly better than the Docker experience on Mac. There's plenty that I really do hate with Windows though. I'd rather run Linux but most corp environments just don't have the tooling for it.
I use Windows on my home PC simply because it's such a versatile setup thanks to native GPU support, game support, and WSL2. It feels like I can do almost everything on one machine with little to no compromise. If I didn't care about games I'd probably load Linux onto it, but WSL2 gets me most of what I want from both worlds without needing to do that.
One thing to consider is non-office whether remote or personal projects.
A lot of devs like gaming. Gaming is more simple on windows. Gaming PCs are usually high spec. High spec is good for most coding.
That's why I use windows quite often. My laptop is Linux, but when I'm running heavy models I'll still remote into my main Windows PC, which I also use for gaming.
Though in terms of workplaces - sure, I reckon you're on the money. Big corps often still force windows onto their Devs.
Every company I've worked at has used Windows. Though the first one did use Linux VMs, the rest have all been pure Windows.
I've likewise had a lot of variation from big corp to startups in companies in different sectors, and it seems to really depend on the org and what platform their managemetn likes. Windows companies usually offer a choice, but if management likes Apple then it's so common to get forced onto a Mac (and often with a dismissive "nobody wants to use windows" comment which really pisses me off). There's usually a small population using Linux if they can get away with it. When devs are given a truly free choice (with no cultural pressure) between windows, mac, linux, a relatively common split I see is about 40% linux, 40% mac, 20% windows.
About 60% to 70% of devs in IT use Windows. And it's closer to 95% in some countries, even first world ones.
Maybe hackernews has older crowd. Windows was the defacto developer OS for a very long time.
Most of large engineering orgs use niche software built for windows. CAD, CAE, many don’t have Linux or Mac versions. See - solidworks, Siemens simcenter, ansys… to name a few. Engineering orgs have to build infrastructure around this and are forced to choose Microslop
For developers at non tech fortune 500 companies, I would put money on Windows being the primary workstation os by a lot
Windows is the de facto standard in most companies.
That said, I bet you will be really hard pressed to find a single Windows machine at Anthropic.
My biggest client right now is about 2/3 Windows 1/3 OS X in the dev team. It was very surprising to me, but I think I freak then out with my maximised tiled iTerms on multiple screens...
Windows is pretty common and well supported in Javaland. Even though I prefer to work on Linux if I can...
I'm a professional C++ dev working in games, and windows is used everywhere , from games themselves to the network infrastructure(I've worked for 3 of the largest games publishers too).
Windows really has a fantastic support for C++ and rendering programmers imho, the tooling is world class and Visual Studio has no match as an IDE. Even if somehow my tools worked on Mac or Linux I'd still pick windows out of sheer convenience of using it for work.
But as things stand - all major console toolchains are windows only. If you're making a game for PlayStation, Xbox or Switch, you have to be on windows.
> I've worked for a pretty wide range of companies over the last decade and only one, maybe two companies even had any people that worked on Windows machines. I haven't worked at a company where devs used Windows in 15 years (and even that company eventually switched to linux).
I think that your range of companies was much less wide then you think.
> I honestly can't even remember that last time I saw a serious developer pull out a Windows laptop.
What is unserious developer?
Windows laptops suck ass compared to an MBP. Windows desktops are pretty nice, you just need to do a lot of first time setup to remove all of the cruft and make sure you have a local user account etc. But for a typical dev building a desktop every 5 years or so that isn't a big deal.
I used to work for company where they used to force windows. And it was pure torture. I tried but they told me performance isn't a good reason....
[dead]
While we're doing anecdotes: I essentially never meet people who own an iPhone, and I've lived (3 months+) in a huge number of countries and cities. The handful people who do are American; bubbles exist :)
For a long time, high end graphics and games was mainly done on Windows and Visual Studio. I'm from that world, and only made the Linux transition last year November after Microsoft forced everyone's hand.