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maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,575
43,560
If you're asking what platform they like to use, when developing, it seems macOS is the preferred platform. If you're asking which platform has more programmers writing code, i.e., windows programs vs. Mac. I'd say windows, just because of the percentage of the market windows holds over macOS.

For instance, we have many mac users at my site, you can request a mac if you want, but there are zero, absolutely no mac specific programs that used, all business applications are windows based (or cloud). I know one employer does not make a trend, but I think overall, the enterprise sector is more likely to have windows based applications then mac based by a high margin.

Then there's the linux platform, while desktop Linux has not taken off, Linux holds a commanding lead on the servers, so they may very well a high volume of developers as well
 
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belvdr

macrumors 603
Aug 15, 2005
5,945
1,372
If you're asking what platform they like to use, when developing, it seems macOS is the preferred platform. If you're asking which platform has more programmers writing code, i.e., windows programs vs. Mac. I'd say windows, just because of the percentage of the market windows holds over macOS.

For instance, we have many mac users at my site, you can request a mac if you want, but there are zero, absolutely no mac specific programs that used, all business applications are windows based (or cloud). I know one employer does not make a trend, but I think overall, the enterprise sector is more likely to have windows based applications then mac based by a high margin.
Our company is split roughly down the middle on Mac or PC for web development. There's no thick application development though.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,575
43,560
Our company is split roughly down the middle on Mac or PC for web development. There's no thick application development though.
Our company is certainly moving towards cloud based solutions, which for people like me, means less and less work, but at this point there's still a sizable volume of client software that is used across the entire business and its all windows based. Even 3rd party client server based applications like POS systems are windows based
 

frou

macrumors 65816
Mar 14, 2009
1,308
1,811
It's very dependent on location. In some countries there's never been a Macintosh culture and hardly anyone uses them, including developers.
 

cateye

macrumors 6502a
Oct 18, 2011
641
2,495
Best by what metric? Most successful? Most prolific? Most award-winning? (who's giving the awards?) Most magical-and-amazing? Most flavorful? Most bouncy? :p

My wife is a software developer for a (very) large company (not consumer software—all cloud based B2B stuff). Developers are allowed to choose whatever platform they want from a "menu" of approved machines, including Macs. The resources she uses are all cross-platform or platform-neutral (VS Code, Outlook, Slack, etc.) She's mentioned at least in her division, the split is about 60 percent Windows, 40 percent use Mac.
 
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