Interesting survey results at StackOverflow.
Originally shared by tim anderson
StackOverflow developer survey shows decline in C#, Windows http://www.itwriting.com/blog/9121-stackoverflow-developer-survey-shows-decline-in-c-windows.html
Interesting survey results at StackOverflow.
Published
Lots of room for speculation, but not a lot in which to place trust. As they point out, sampling only the SO community necessarily limits the respondents. The declines noted may have as much do with the community as with the measured results.
Among other things, it is very possible that fewer developers are employed overall, and fewer commercial apps produced. The impact of open-source is another factor not easily measured.
The more I consider it, the less I find reason to think the survey has any real meaning.
Bill Meyer : Considering the fact that Microsoft has made a business decision to make Visual Studio available for free and releasing the .NET framework as open-source; there’s obviously a disruptive force being wrought by the rush to mobile development. Hence; I’m not totally skeptical of this report. Coupled with the fact that it’s difficult to make money building Windows applications when your market is millennials’ using mobile devices and expect “apps” to be free; I wouldn’t be surprised if in 5 years the only people writing Windows apps are gamers and commercial software developers.
The growth is in Mobile. Android supports Java but not .NET, while iOS supports neither Java nor .NET. That’s over 90% of the market! And there’s a very strong shift towards a “mobile-first” development strategy on the part of most corporations and large software producers. MS has been betting that their C#/.NET inertia will motivate companies to adopt their mobile platforms, but that’s clearly not happening.
That leaves the middle-tier and back-end spaces as the only real home for .NET growth. However, Java has quite a stronghold on middle-tier development, and cloud-based solutions are making the back-end database irrelevant.
A large portion of Microsoft’s grip on technology has been their relatively strong vertical integration, with C#/.NET working nicely on desktops, middle-tier, and DB Services. But where’s the justification for either C# or .NET (or any of the MS vertical integration mojo) in a mobile world where Android and iOS dominate the front-end, Java dominates the middle-tier, and back-end DB services become SaaS solutions?
My interpretation of the result: C# developers have better resources than StackOverflow.
Just have a look at the sites that are operated or sponsored by Microsoft or Xamarin. It’s quite easy to find tutorials and code snippets for almost any problem.
Fred Ahrens In addition, it looks like every Android phone owner wants to program something. Java is today’s BASIC.
Dalija Prasnikar That is true on several levels… For example, Java, like BASIC, will also leave you brain damaged.
Asbjørn Heid Don’t tell me… I am getting my brain damaged on daily basis…
I haven’t been doing any serious Delphi work this year, and I am firing Delphi every now and then just to keep my sanity intact.