Developers Shifting Target from Windows

This story was on Digg so many times I figured I had to mention it, although I think there’s a certain “duh” factor about the whole thing.

Analysts at Evans Data Corporation found 64% of developers in North America are writing software for Windows. That’s down 10% from the year before. They said this is part of shift away from Windows that started about two years ago and is expected to continue.

They primarily correlate the decline with an increase in the number of developers writing for Linux, but also mention an increase in development for niche client devices (read: Blackberry et. al.).

The survey found Windows remains just as popular for the development platform itself, but I would predict that declining over time as well.

On a side note, 1/3 of developers were currently working with virtualization*, with an expected increase of 40% next year.

Summaries of this story abound, but here’s one if you want to give it a gander.

*On a virtualization side note, I recently tried Virtualbox after a long stint with Vmware Server. I have to give it a big thumbs up. It’s less resource intensive and seems a bit quicker overall (on Ubuntu 7.04 // AMD X2 3800+ with virtualization support on chip // 2GB RAM). I got tired of recompiling Vmware every time a kernel upgrade came out. Plus, Virtualbox has a GPL’d version.

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