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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

A lot of engineers who use windows aren’t programmers. This is because a lot of custom engineering packages that require windows, especially since they were developed 20 years ago when windows was dominate.

But programmers have many more choices, and visual studio shops aren’t very common anymore, at least in the developed world, and I would bet countries like Russia and China as well.

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There’s also the whole world of Java software and engineering which all pretty much Just Works on Windows.

You don’t have to be a Visual Studio shop to use Windows machines, just like you don’t need to be an Xcode shop to use Macs.

Sure, older tools are also feasible on windows. But if you are going with clang or GC, why bother? I guess you could do java dev on windows as well as other platforms.

Quite a lot of programmers use windows, because they require less maintenance and there is no reason not to.

Are you sure any of the three major operating systems require much maintenance these days?

At least for linux, I would assume that it hugely comes down to how much of a personal statement the OS is to developers.

I use Arch btw.

Well, yes, "Linux" is not well-specified. When one installs Arch, they hopefully know what they want, and it's something else than just a low-maintenance casual desktop OS. :)

Mac’s don’t require much maintenance either, and last longer then Lenovo things. When I worked tech in Beijing already a lot of programmers used them, even in changping around Lenovo’s big R&D office.

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