[OT] Windows dying

[Joakim]

On Wednesday, 1 November 2017 at 21:19:55 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> 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

I say dying, you say decline, no point in debating the semantics. 
I will agree with you that we don't know how soon Windows will 
actually, effectively die: an imminent collapse is merely my 
forecast, which I tried to back up with data and examples of how 
mobile is gunning to kill it off.  Dying tech can sometimes 
rebound for some time, so it is certainly possible for Windows.

But ultimately all this discussion of market share won't matter 
if nobody wants to do the work.  Windows has historically been 
the dominant tech platform and D's support for it is much more 
advanced than its support for the currently dominant platform, 
Android, which I'm the only person working on.

I'm trying to influence people to work more on Android and less 
on Windows, based on the aforementioned market share and product 
data.  You presumably believe Windows won't fade that fast and 
should still receive a higher level of investment than I would 
recommend.

We've each made our case.  Given the current levels of 
investment, I'm not sure anybody cares about these market share 
arguments anyway. ;) More likely, it is completely idiosyncratic, 
just based on the need, skill, and time of the particular D dev.  
We can only hope that this data and argument has had some 
influence on the community.