Linux is the most popular development platform on Stack Overflow
Posted on 03/23/2018 3:19:56 AM PDT by ShadowAce
More than 100,000 developers participated in this year's Annual Developer Survey, which included several new topics ranging from ethics in coding to artificial intelligence (AI). The results are finally here and reveal the fact that some technologies and operating systems have become more popular than others in the past year.
According to the survey, JavaScript remains the most used programming language for the six years in a row, back-end developer is the most common developer type, over 80 percent of responders code as a hobby and 92.9 percent are male, and Node.js is the number one framework used by developers.
Moreover, MySQL and SQL Server remain the most commonly used databases, Rust is the most loved programming language for the third year in a row, Redis is the most loved database for the second year in a row, and Visual Studio Code dethroned Visual Studio as the most popular integrated developer environment.
To our surprise, the open source Linux platform has dethroned Microsoft's Windows operating system in becoming the most used platform for development, according to Stack Overflow's survey. In numbers, this year's survey shows that Linux is used by 48.3 percent of all responders, compared to 32.9 percent in the 2017 survey.
"Linux and Windows Desktop or Server are the most common choices that our respondents say they have done development work for this year," said Stack Overflow. "Linux is once again the most loved platform for development, with serverless infrastructure also loved this year."
This year, Windows is down 5.6 percent, from 41.0 percent to 35.4 percent, on both desktop and server systems, followed by Google's Linux-based Android mobile OS with 29 percent. Apple's macOS sits on fifth place in this year's survey with 17.9 percent, followed by Raspberry Pi users with 15.9 percent.
The survey also shows that Amazon's AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud platform is more popular than Google's Cloud Platform/App Engine and Microsoft's Azure. Check out the full results of Stack Overflow's 2018 Annual Developer Survey to learn more about this year's technology trends.
I’ve gone full Linux over the last year and am not looking back. One Fedora KDE and two Ubuntu Cinnamon. The problem with Fedora is lack of video drivers and they only do two cycles of updates.
Not sure what you mean by these statements. You have Mesa, nouveau, NVidia, and Radeon drivers available. That covers just about every video card in existence.
Two cycles of updates? Oh--you mean they only officially support a release for two cycles. Yeah. Things move pretty quick in the Fedora world. It's meant to be a development/testing distro for Red Hat, so they stay on the bleeding edge.
If our running a business you use windows. Maybe you have a single task oriented server somewhere that you can dedicate to linux. Maybe you have a few of these. But for the business (clients and general personnel) as a whole, you are using Windows.
This article is misleading. Linux is not the most popular operating system. Linux is the most popular development platform. This is not a surprise. I’ve been working in IT for 20+ years, and I’ve never seen node.js or JBoss running in Windows. Windows Server, for development, is dedicated to .NET. There’s too much fumbling with IIS necessary to not only get Javascript running stable but SECURE. Linux is a better option.
In my 20 years, aside from the early years with Novell Netware, I’ve not worked in an environment where Windows Server wasn’t the preferred infrastructure back end. Active Directory is hands down the best LDAP solution out there.
Excellent point!
I wonder how much of its popularity is tied to the fact that it is free.
This article is not misleading. From the title on down, it is talking only about development platforms. There is no mention anywhere in this article about general, end-user, usage.
Probably some. But licensing issues, openness, and adherence to standards probably has more to do with it.
This is typical of Linux. It requires a lot of tweaking and hunting around for drivers to make it work. Ubuntu is the best yet I haven’t had any problems.
I developed a web server and WebDAV with Apache and now have an internet music server using shoutcast and o repurposed a 10 year old laptop.
For most Freepers Windows is just fine. Don’t be scared out of it.
I am speaking from a user and consumer perspective and have been trying to push our business to adopt Linux because... it is free. We have 100+ computers that are used to open and view pdf files and occasionally open Excel. It makes a lot of sense to go all Linux. However, our IT guy is not comfortable with that.
Plus, we do use specialized software that would have to be compatible with Linux. Unfortunately, the Linux option wasn't considered when we were shopping around for this type of software. Software that we paid $200K for.
We have three servers that are all running Windows.
Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping!
You’re both correct.
Those FReepers who are end users, however, which is the vast majority here, don’t note or understand the difference, so rarestia was bringing those facts forward.
I do work for Microsoft, and mostly I’ve migrated from support/consulting on on-premises datacenters to the cloud, and use a LOT of Linux virtual machines and Linux based web services in the Microsoft Azure environment. Microsoft is no enemy of Linux and in fact a very big promoter of its use.
Windows in the on-premises datacenter is still king, but I think a lot of Azure is using Linux under the hood!
That has always been the long pole in the tent.
I am also a MCT and LPIC-3 instructor but never get many people to sign up for my Linux courses.
I ask the Windows Server students how they feel about switching over to Linux; mostly they are afraid to--lack of knowledge.
I do believe it is not that they're stupid; just too busy to learn something new which is no harder than what they already know, but don't know that.
VMware
You bet. That or Hyper-V. I don’t see much single role-dedicated hardware in the datacenter any longer.
That’s also one reason to integrate to cloud—you can run VMs on-premises and in the cloud—and scale up and down much faster on many different workloads. With enough bandwidth, you can even cluster across the edge.
As a cyber security professional and penetration tester, I use Linux for my personal machine, and two of my corp machines. My company also issues one windows laptop.
All of my important stuff goes on the Linux server. But I seriously hope that corporations continue to use windows. It keeps me employed and makes my job far easier.
I have he same hope, though for a different reason.
As a Linux professional, people like me are limited in supply. It helps my bottom line.
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