[OT] Windows dying
jmh530
john.michael.hall at gmail.com
Wed Nov 1 21:19:55 UTC 2017
On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 at 19:49:04 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>
> As for saying Windows is dying, that is a factual examination
> of the data
When you say it is dying, I (and perhaps most others) would
assume the argument you are making is that not only is Windows in
decline, but also that it is about to no longer exist as a
meaningful platform for programmers to code on.
This is a forecast about the future. However, the future is
inherently un-knowable. Forecasts are opinions. While these
forecasts may be based on facts and people could disagree about
the likelihood of the forecast or their confidence in the
forecast, it is opinion. It is not fact.
I wouldn't dispute that Windows is in decline. I looked up the
stack overflow survey of platforms that people program on and
added up the Windows components from 2013 to 2016. In 2013 it was
60.4% and steadily fell to 52.2% in 2016. The largest growth of
the share was OS X (not Linux). However, even falling from 60% to
50%, it's still 50%. That's huge. And this is programmers who use
Stack Overflow, not normal users. Look at the developer
environment and its either Visual Studio or a text editor
(Sublime or Notepad++) as most popular.
The evidence says it is in decline. And the trend doesn't look
good. However, that doesn't mean it's going away. It also doesn't
mean you can project the current trend into the future at the
current rate or at a faster or slower rate. Who knows what the
rate could be. What matters is that half of all developers (by
this measure) use Windows now. Who knows what the equilibrium
will be? Maybe it will stabilize at roughly equal shares across
shares across Linux/OSX/Windows. Maybe Windows will become niche
(in which case you could conceivably make the argument that it's
dying). God only knows. But you cannot say that it is all fact
and not opinion.
It is opinion. It is a forecast.
[1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2016
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