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Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

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Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#121

Post by baq »

happytoexplain wrote: post #87
namblooc wrote: post #76

I'm surprised at the small number of Windows users. At my workplace every computer has Windows installed and we didn't really have a choice about it, although I never asked. Also, as a fullstack web developer, I don't really see why I would prefer one over the other, since they all support VSCode and I can write code on any one of them. But then again, I exist inside of an echochamber of Windows users so I'm pretty c…

I was surprised in the opposite direction - I thought Windows would be <5% for dev. Big, cheap contracting agencies skew the Windows number up globally, and even just in the US, but this is just HN users so I expected a much smaller representation.

Most developers don’t read HN.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#124

Post by beAbU »

baq wrote: post #120
winecamera wrote: post #70

I'd love to use macOS, but macOS's font rendering on low DPI monitors (2560x1440) looks awful compared to Windows's font rendering. It's to the point that it's unusable for coding, so I just use Windows with WSL.

BetterDisplay is $15 or so and it changes the equation from ’horrible’ to ‘good enough’. Still not as good as other OSes but at least you don’t have to buy an expensive monitor. Why Apple decided to not support low dpi is beyond me.

Every time someone complains about some rough edge or papercut on MacOS, someone always chimes in woth "there's this app that fixes it for $10".

I find it astounding that this has somehow been normalized.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#125

Post by marssaxman »

woleium wrote: post #118
marssaxman wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran MacOS for decades and then switched to Linux, because I no longer have the patience to deal with an OS which cannot be tinkered and fiddled into the shape I prefer it in, its makers believing that they know better than I do what I ought to be doing with my own hardware. I cannot stand the paternalism. Linux has its quirks, but at least I can be sure that in the end, it can always be made to do what I want.

except sleep then hibernate on lid close of most laptops, it seems.

Fair, that is annoying.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#126

Post by irvingprime »

For many years I've developed on a Linux VM running on a Windows host. At a couple of jobs I ran a Linux VM on a MacOS host.

This way, my development environment remains stable and portable and the thing I use to read email and surf the web is whatever. It works for me.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#127

Post by howdyhowdy123 »

noisem4ker wrote: post #94
howdyhowdy123 wrote: post #59

[flagged]

You might find the StackOverflow surveys more representative: they crown Windows as the most used OS, with a solid margin. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology/#1-computer-...

[flagged]

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#130

Post by happytoexplain »

baq wrote: post #121
happytoexplain wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised in the opposite direction - I thought Windows would be <5% for dev. Big, cheap contracting agencies skew the Windows number up globally, and even just in the US, but this is just HN users so I expected a much smaller representation.

Most developers don’t read HN.

That's what I mean - I'd think the subset of developers who read HN would be even more Unixy than the average developer.
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