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Comment by daveoc64 | Hacker News Reader

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daveoc64·

As the Stack Overflow developer survey shows, a majority of developers use Windows:

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology#1-computer-o...

HN is atypical of the world, particularly anything outside of the USA.

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I ditched windows and switched to Linux back in the Windows 98 days. Have not looked back since.

Good for you. You are part of a minority of users.

It may also be that Windows users are just not as vocal.

I agree that HN is atypical of the world, but so is any surveys by Stack Overflow too, it's really heavily Windows and C# biased across the board, so take whatever results they get with a grain of salt.

Why do you think that? Is it really biased, considering the majority of the world uses Windows? Or is it just that you don't like it?

By the way, I'm not using Windows (but love .NET) and prefer Linux, but I'm not fooling myself that it's a popular choice on the desktop by any metric.

I think there are many reasons. Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood were both hugely into .NET/C# and Windows Tech (one of them worked at Microsoft even maybe?). Then the entire startup was built with Microsoft tech, because they knew that best, so when they talk about their architecture they obviously draw a particular crowd among others. It felt like a lot of the early community came from the founders blogs and Microsoft circles, and I was also asking mostly C# questions on SO too in the beginning.

Probably someone remembers the history better than me and have more clarity and/or corrections.

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