Developers Prefer XP Over Vista? I Wouldn't Have Guessed...
A new survey released recently from Evan's Data Corporation is suggesting that developers are far and away preferring to develop for XP over Vista. While that may not be a big shocker to some, what did shock me was the expressed intent to develop for Linux versus Vista: 13% of developers are working on a Linux program, while only 8% are working on Vista programs.
Yikes! I'm kinda embarrassed for Microsoft to hear this news.
It's not all bad news though (although, I'm not sure I'd say this is necessarily positive news). 49% of developers are focusing on Windows XP right now. Sure, that's an older OS and it's on the verge of discontinuation, but the silver lining is that most programs written to run on XP will also run on Vista. That's good for MS, but still stinks a bit, because these programs aren't being constructed to use Vista. Instead, Vista can merely run them.
The survey indicated that next year will be a better year for Vista development, with plans to develop for the platform jumping to 24%, but even then, more developers are planning on running their programs in XP. Besides, we've heard that "next year will be better for Vista" line before. This doesn't bode well for the company that has staked everything on its developers. If you can't get the development community behind you, it really doesn't matter how cool or sleek your OS is, at least in this writer's eyes.
That reminds me, if you are thinking about getting a new PC anytime soon, but don't want to jump on the Vista bandwagon, you may want to run out and get a copy or two of XP now. Microsoft will officially stop selling XP in just a week, on June 30.
[via: Ars Technica]
Jesse James
Posted to In the News, On Your Desk on 23 June 2008
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: development platforms, Linux, Microsoft, Vista, XP
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They wrote about the same report on Cnet and slashdot a few days ago.
Read the comments on Cnet, Slashdot and Ars.
The article said "target" not "preffer"
Developers don't target specific OSes. Properly written code will work anywhere.
So that 49% and 13% opensource (The article says "Opensource" and *not* specifically linux. Linux is Opensource, however not all open source is Linux.)
8% targetting Vista could mean they're using technologies that will *only* work in vista. That's actually not that bad a number when you spin it that way.