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0 pointsmorgante12y ago0 comments

That's not a counter to my point. Even if they're running Linux, it's more and more on a Mac. (And yes, I do see plenty of those.)

And let's be honest here: more and more developers are web/app developers.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

PommeDeTerre12y ago· 2 in thread

I think that you may be vastly overestimating the number of web and mobile app developers. They're still a relatively small proportion of all software developers.

While web developers may be more vocal and have more content on the web (this isn't unexpected, since they are web developers, after all), you shouldn't forget about the numerous other developers out there. They're working on systems software, embedded software, industrial control software, accounting and billing software, various other kinds of business software, scientific software, and so forth.

These days, these kinds of developers generally use Windows or Linux systems, running on non-Mac PC hardware of some sort. And there are a whole lot of these developers.

TheLegace12y ago

It's a shame too because it's a complete mess in these other fields. And the open source community has been trying to fill in the gaps(quite well I might add). But again official documentation is still lagging. Which is understandable, these people have lives and they are doing it in their free time.

If you look at ARM and Microcontroller development, it's really a sad state of affairs. There isn't a single option officially ARM gives you to do Linux based application. Ironically the only software that is probably going to run on those embedded devices...Linux.

Honestly I wish they would scrap their horrible pathetic excuse for a development environment, and listen to the community who actually you know buy their devices.

Case in point. Try to compare the horridness of the Official STM32 libraries with libopencm3, which is amazing and incredibly simple.

Sincerely.. Fed up embedded developer.

welly12y ago

> I think that you may be vastly overestimating the number of web and mobile app developers. They're still a relatively small proportion of all software developers.

Do you think? I'd be interested to see statistics on this (I'm not doubting you in saying that!). Being as web development (in my experience as a web developer and occasional software developer) is the entry level for software development, I'd have thought web developers easily make up the majority of overall software developers. Everyone is a PHP developer these days, it seems.

Perhaps you're right though (having just read your second paragraph).

pessimizer12y ago

I meant it to be a counter to your point; web developers don't really need access to their own systems, so the fact that they have a monoculture of Macs doesn't speak to the access that OS X allows you to have.

edit: and to be really frank, what web developers do for a living is write software that they eventually intend to deploy on Linux.

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