[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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