Stack Overflow reports that more developers now use OS X than Linux as their primary OS, and that if the trend continues, fewer than half of all developers will be using Windows next year.
Last year, Mac edged ahead of the Linuxes as the number 2 operating system among developers. This year it became clear that trend is real. If OS adoption rates hold steady, by next year’s survey fewer than 50% of developers may be using Windows.
The site says it carried out ‘the most comprehensive developer survey ever conducted,’ with more than 56,000 coders across 173 countries taking part.
In mobile development, more were still developing for Android than iOS – 61.9% versus 47.5% – but Swift is now used by almost a third of developers. Swift was also the second most loved language after Rust.
There are many more stats to be found in the full survey results.
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Thats because os X is the “perfect linux” if you will.
It also has the same workings of linux, like a package manager, and command line tools.
Hell, the only difference between them is the UI.
feel free to correct me, since I’m just beginning to use ubuntu linux for the first time.
Well, you’re not really incorrect there. OS X is certified UNIX, while Linux (unless I’ve misread somewhere) is UNIX-based. And yes, a lot of the same tools that are available on Linux should be able to work on OS X with minimal changes.
perfect? in what point? it’s slower (a lot) with all type of security problems, if you have a bug you need to wait weeks if you’re lucky, the system sends your information to Apple, the hardware is lock, is slower(yes again), you don0t control nothing, is good for lazy devs only
and?
At least it doesn’t have an unfinished desktop experience, unlike ubuntu.
Its slower with all type of security problems.
sure, but they get almost all of them patched with a single update.
The system sends your information to apple.
You do know you can get out of it if you want, right?
The hardware is lock.
An exchange you get a better experience, unlike linux’s o so stable drivers.
Its slower.
In what point.
see what I did there?
lol
Its a perfect linux because its easy to switch to linux and back with out having to learn anything at all about how things work, And you can still use all of your tools from linux if you want.
I’m glad to say that I am one of these people.
OSX was ahead of Linux last year as well. They were neck and neck since 2013, and growing at a consistent rate. 2016 is the first year showing a significantly higher growth rate for OSX compared to Linux. I only swapped to OSX from Linux because of the hardware. If you want a good laptop, MBP’s are hard to beat.
Part of it is that OSX is required for making anything for iOS. I originally bought a Mac to submit things to the App Store. I still miss a lot of what Linux (especially Arch) has to offer. If something is frustrating about OSX, it’s 50/50 whether it’s even possible to change it and obviously you can’t change anything about Apple hardware. I don’t exactly regret being forced to switch — OSX never just stops working after a package update — but I miss the freedom and deeper knowledge you get from tinkering with Linux.
The cool part about LInux is that since it’s Open Source and Free, you can just fire up a VM (or cloud instance) to get your Linux goodness. I do that all the time for side-projects – I want my silky-smooth OSX and the Microsoft apps, but if I want to do development in Linux, it’s just a VM or cloud instance away.
OSX isn’t just Unix, it’s all the hardware support and industry support that makes it good as a client machine.
Now, if only Apple could get their act together on the Mac App Store… sigh.
This works for developing code, but there are applications where you need to use your code and it might require all the resources of your computer. Running 2 OS simultaneously is not always practical.
That’s interesting. OS X is, as I call it, the perfect OS for the lazy developers, and yes, I’m guilty. That being said, most developers I know use Linux for their personal machines as they can basically do whatever they want with it, and Linux is clearly the most popular OS within my circle.
Anyway, it’s an interesting survey indeed.
I’m interested in some arguments why OSX devs are lazy compared to linux devs?
we can use npm, atom, nano, vim etc in the same way as linux users, with homebrew and other tools we even use kinda everything like linux does. we don’t get amazon ads like ubuntu and have a pretty stable software that has been specifically designed for our notebooks to take full advantage of the trackpad etc.
I’m not an apple fanboi, i use mac for work, windows for gaming and tried 5 months of ubuntu for gaming. I also tried fedora on my windows machine to do some coding at home, but they keyboard shortcuts kinda killed me, especially in the terminal (im just used to be able to cmd+c and cmd+v stuff inside the terminal while still being able to kill processes with ctrl+c)
also my most beloved editors phpstorm and atom work on both systems the identical way, but stuff like sequel pro only works on osx (and there is no real and nice competition on either windows or linux, sadly).
One man’s laziness is another’s efficiency.
Is Haskell really more ‘loved’ than Python, C# and Node?????
It’s “loved”, not “used”, where Haskell doesn’t even show up O_O. But the data looks strange and unexplained.
Worse, OS X (all versions) is only ahead if you split Win7 and Win10. Is that a fair comparison?
Overall, the data analysis in the original post seems rather awful.
Any particular reason why Windows is the only OS to get split into different versions?
Surely not every designer is using the same flavour of linux or every designer on the same version of OSX so why do it with windows? Or is it because the person behind the survey didn’t want to show such as massive leaning towards windows and thus make OSX look better?
There are lies, damn lies and statistics….
Agreed – at the very least they should have some “All Windows” aggregated %.
Just an FYI – it looks like the overall, Windows in aggregate does show a YoY shrink in % – 2015 was 54.5%, now (2016) it’s 52.1%.
So while Windows dominates (as is expected – Apple hasn’t really made a dent in Microsoft’s corporate dominance), it’s shrinking overall.
It should also be noted that if a person wants to develop for iOS they must use OSX.
Windows don’t loose his supremacy but his hegemony.
OSX is Linux for grandma and the babies.
That’s a pretty strange way to graph things. Why is OSX in one group and Windows in 3?
Also, I wonder how this would change if Apple made it possible to develop iOS apps on OS’s that weren’t Macs. What fraction of developers are using OSX because they have not choice?
So, we’re just not gonna talk about the fact that 1 in every 1000 developers are using Windows Vista? We need to help these people, they’ve clearly got severe psychological issues!!!
I use a Mac at work but *definitely* prefer Linux at home. The GNU set of tools tend to be more robust than the old UNIX tools included with Mac OS.
Beyond that, Linux tends to be a lot less resource-intensive and just runs better overall (I use Slackware).
Would that be actually a “Stack Overflow survey” or a “Stack Overflow _users_ survey”?
Since SO site is mostly for seeking resolution to one’s problems, if SO polled their members, it would just indicate that OSX programmers have the most problems they go to the site for solving…
yeah, same problem on my end.
I use Linux Mint exclusively, but since I wanted to compile my Cordova app to iOS, I also had to buy a mac. It’s ok…..but it’s not linux, hence I’m forced to use it simply to provide to that specific platform. Yet, with gnu c compiler and now, monolib, I’m able to compile to windows and linux. Interesting to see what osx would be if it didn’t have bash and homebrew anymore, I guess win10 and bash/apt then?
Not saying that’s a good thing though….IDK – gonna be weird for a while.
Right now I’m trying to switch from Mac back to Windows. It’s not that bad as I thought, actually. Here’s my story on that: http://blog.ikvasnica.com/entry/i-m-moving-from-mac-to-windows-as-a-web-developer
but 52.2% of web developers use Windows. lol
What a difference a year makes!