Hacker News Reader

Comment by vector_spaces | Hacker News Reader

This phenomenon of software engineers using MacBooks for work is a rare and primarily coastal phenomenon, at least in North America. Virtually all software engineering at utility companies, hospitals, state and local governments, and similarly boring but critical enterprise companies in industries like insurance happens on Windows on Azure using Windows or Microsoft oriented stacks.

View on HN

I, personally, would not chalk that up to a phenomenon. Operating System selection largely depends on the work you do paired with the industry you're in. Some extrapolations:

I work in systems engineering for web technology companies. Most of the applications I build run on Linux so it makes sense to write on a Unix like OS. I could use Linux or MacOS, but Apple has a strong preconfiguration and leasing pipeline so usually the companies I work for offer MacBooks Pros.

When I was building software in the US South I would have to look out for companies that were Windows shops because I don't do Windows systems engineering and there were an abundance of shops that did before the .NET Core rewrite that enabled you to run on Linux. Those shops would've definitely shipped me a Windows laptop. Anecdotally, I buy servers out of a DC in Houston and nearly all of them come with Windows Datacenter edition. Most of those companies fell into certain industries that didn't include what I typically worked in.

That's all to say, region can be roughly correlated, but it's not the actual reason. It largely has to do with who sold who the software stack they have trouble moving off of today which influences everything else.

Note that my comment was observational, I'm not saying companies should use Windows, and I'm not even talking about reasons for using one tech stack or another. I'm just reminding the parent that this association of Windows with "non-technical" is nonsense -- lots of extremely talented folks work on difficult and important problems and critical systems on Windows, targeting Microsoft stacks. Further, it seems likely that most software is written on Windows.

Yeap, that's all fair. I was mainly poking at your word choice of "phenomenon" because it can be reasoned. I'm not quite sure about your last sentence but that's an entirely different discussion with much more noise than signal to parse through.

"Phenomenon" just means "thing that can be observed". It doesn't need to mean something that is unusual or surprising.

Huh; according to Merriam-Webster the word has basically lost meaning: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phenomenon

The first definition is how you and OP used it, the second is how I used it (exclusive of things that can be "sensed" as opposed to reasoned).

I think your usage is actually more like definition 3.

This is something "bothering" me as well. It's either Mac or Linux if you want to be "cool" in tech.

I am always like "wait do you not write any Windows software or is it all on the Web"?

Maybe I am ignorant and stuff and maybe it's just bothering me. :)

Windows computers tend to also get the most overreaching invasive MDM / Endpoint Slowdown Software.

Can't say for Windows, but at work I manage a bunch of iPads with JAMF and it's really comfy to use.

I write applications for Linux, MacOS, and Windows but I use cross-compiling frameworks like Wails or Tauri to do so. If I write in Windows Forms (old Xamarin forms) then my application only works on Windows. MacOS is similar. All of my development occurs in Linux as a result.

There's a lot of work that is neither Windows software nor web. And much (most?) of that runs on Linux.

I find this whole conversation amusing. Growing up and going to school in the 2000s, Windows was the default choice, and I felt like I had to fight to use anything else. Now the conversation has reversed to some extent.

>Windows on Azure

Lol, citation needed if you actually believe this.

>or Microsoft oriented stacks.

is a very complicated way to say Windows desktop.

Re windows desktop, no, it's not a complicated way of saying that. I am talking about, for example:

- ASP.NET Core backends running on anything (e.g. Linux)

- Angular or Vue frontends running on anything

- applications using SQL Server databases running on anything

- applications targeting on-prem Windows servers or VMs or, sure, Windows desktops

- data / reporting systems that interact with AAS

Apparently I phrased my response poorly. I was responding to the narrow context of the idea that devs aren't using Azure VMs instead of Macs. I was not disputing the popularity of Azure.

Microsoft sales is surprisingly good at selling Azure to c-level at companies where the primary output isn't software, based on existing Windows/Office deployments. Unfortunately also true for Teams. Retailers are also often opposed to AWS because they consider Amazon a competitor in its entirety.

Just so you know this is a very ignorant comment. I don't mean that as an insult, but literally you are ignorant of the facts. If you care you should use this opportunity to educate yourself on the state of the Microsoft stack.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com