Most developers I know use already a mac. It is a faster system for similar hardware (maybe due to the filesystem or something) and its Unix insides support development work better than Windows.
M1 is just going to make macs even more dominant.
And AMD is not going to rescue Windows/Intel. These night and day improvements are simply too big to be explained by TSMC being a better fab than Intel.
"Linux and Windows maintain the top spots for most popular platforms, with over half of the respondents reporting that they have done development work with them this year. We also see some year over year growth in the popularity of container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes."
Which means we're looking at the question with the wrong granularity.
There are sectors of the industry where Windows is a hard requirement, ones where Macs are utterly dominant, and others where Linux is assumed and running a proprietary Apple OS gets you the side-eye.
> Windows is a hard requirement, ones where Macs are utterly dominant
I think you got it reversed. One can develop Android apps on macOS because there's no lockin like XCode. The same is not true for iOS apps which require XCode.
I don't have it reversed at all, mobile applications are just one sector of software development, and not a very large one.
There are entire industries (healthcare, to name but one), where Windows is simply a given, and all development targets that platform.
It's true that Macs are a requirement for iOS development, I was referring more to the observed fact that most devs in SF doing "cloud" whatever use a Mac, probably around 80%.
> most devs in SF doing "cloud" whatever use a Mac, probably around 80%.
They're just victims of group think, advertising, peer pressure or status signalling. Everywhere else in the world, 80% of people doing "cloud" whatever aren't using a Mac.
Maybe I should clarify the "most developers I know".
Inside my world little circle of freelance Java / JavaScript developers 2/3 are on a mac. People buy their own work machine unlike maybe working for a big organisation where that is provided for you.
M1 is just going to make macs even more dominant.
And AMD is not going to rescue Windows/Intel. These night and day improvements are simply too big to be explained by TSMC being a better fab than Intel.