Microsoft Distinguished Engineer David Fowler called out a viral X post that said Windows is not worth developers’ time. It’s the typical Windows-hate rage-bait post, which Fowler recognized, while also saying more developers use Windows than any other operating system.

He’s right on the numbers, but polls of startup and Big Tech developers show many of them choose macOS and Linux, which is why Microsoft keeps pouring work into WSL.

“life is too short to support windows users,” posted Michael Chomsky, whose X bio says most startup problems can be solved with 100M views! Of course, that’s enough to deem his X post worthless; however, the post crossed 15,000 views and was climbing fast. The replies under it are exactly what you’d expect.

David Fowler, who has been at Microsoft for over 18 years, quote-posted it, saying: “This is click bait but more developers use windows than any other operating system.”

“Windows sucks” posts are engagement gold on X, and interestingly, this one didn’t have the word Microslop in the comments, at least, when we first spotted it.

It’s no surprise that Windows has the largest developer pool and I can’t help but remember Steve Ballmer’s famous “developers, developers, developers” chant on stage. That said, the world has changed and Microsoft is still chasing them, but with WSL, Linux containers and AI agents instead of a sweaty stage performance.

Fowler is right, but “more developers use Windows” could use a bit more context

In Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, Windows was the most used OS among professional developers at 49.5%, followed by macOS at 32.9% and Ubuntu at 27.7%. WSL got 16.8%, and Linux outside WSL got 16.7%.

However, developers could pick more than one OS, and WSL has its own entry. Many developers use a Windows desktop and do most of their coding in Linux.

Then there’s the poll The Pragmatic Engineer‘s Gergely Orosz ran on X and LinkedIn, which put Windows at just 12%. On X, macOS got 61.6%, Linux 24.2% and Windows 12.8%, and the LinkedIn results looked almost identical. Orosz admits his audience is more friendly toward VC-funded startups and Big Tech, so it isn’t the whole industry.

But Fowler is talking about how many developers use Windows, while Orosz’s poll shows what a high-profile slice of them prefers. Both can be true.

So why do so many developers still choose Mac or Linux?

For web, cloud, backend and AI developers, Unix tooling is the draw. Most production servers run Linux, and macOS gives developers a Unix environment on polished hardware without having to maintain Linux. Orosz also mentions that startups and Big Tech love Macs partly because of Apple Silicon, and because they aren’t trying to save money on developer hardware.

Windows still makes a lot of sense for .NET and C# developers, Visual Studio users, game developers, enterprises and anyone building Windows software, and Windows laptops come at every price point. In fact, a Google researcher recently argued that Windows NT puts Linux to shame in many ways.

Still, my favourite reply under Fowler’s post was “The biggest windows feature is WSL.” Funny, but not completely wrong.

Microsoft knows developers have a Windows problem, which is why WSL keeps getting better

If Windows were the obvious choice for developers, Microsoft wouldn’t need to keep adding Linux to it. Yet WSL Containers is now generally available, Ubuntu is growing faster on Windows 11 than on native Linux PCs, and even Google is bringing WSL support to its AI tools.

Plenty of developers want Windows hardware with Linux tools, instead of Windows as their dev environment.

Microsoft is also trying to win developers in other ways. It built Project Zenith for power users and a tool that debloats Windows 11 into a clean dev machine, which, to be fair, Linux users don’t need. The software giant also pledged to make Windows 11 the OS for building AI.

Windows has developers. Does it have their loyalty?

Some time ago, Fowler said native apps are back, and has said typing code is absolutely over. But if developers loved Windows, they’d be building native apps for it.

Instead, Windows keeps getting web apps, and one developer explained why. After Win32, WinForms, WPF, Silverlight, UWP, and now WinUI, Microsoft first has to convince developers to trust it this time. It’s pushing WinUI, building it in public, and even using AI to write native apps in 30 minutes, while macOS keeps getting a steady flow of native apps.

The original post was rage bait, and Fowler was right to call it out. But millions of developers use Windows because their employer gave them a PC, or because they need Visual Studio. The harder win is a developer who could use anything and still picks Windows, and that’s what Microsoft’s WSL, WinUI, and AI push is chasing.

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