It's not just you: Developers hate Vista, too

Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:33PM EDT

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With XP set to be discontinued in two short weeks, you'd think developers would be rushing to get their wares ready for Vista. And you'd be wrong. According to an eye-popping report from market analysis firm Evans Data, only eight percent of North American software developers are writing for Vista, while a full half are still writing for XP. Read the full press release on the report here (registration required).

That's even lower than the overall market share of Vista, which is currently about 15 percent of all computers connected to the web.

There are no real surprises behind Vista's lack of enthusiasm among developers. The poor showing likely stems from its litany of problems, poor support for older computers and peripherals, and healthy demand for Windows XP, which still owns a 72 percent market share. (Overall Windows development, including server versions, is underway by about 2/3 of all developers, reflecting significant strength in the Mac and Linux markets.)

Cnet's Matt Asay notes that Microsoft may also be at blame for making Vista development too difficult. Quoting an article by ITJungle, he reminds us that Vista's security efforts come at the expense of making software easier to use and to write. Without access to the lowest levels of the operating system plus that UAC "are you sure!?" popup nonsense, developing for Vista represents possibly the largest change to the programming environment since Windows 95.

If I were (still) a programmer I'd probably feel the same way.

Comments on It's not just you: Developers hate Vista, too

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  • 6 Posted by will_luu on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:47PM EDT Report Abuse

    ummm. Nobody writes just for one version of the OS. It's like saying, hey, my new Mac app will only run on the latest version of Mac OS X (10.5) but will not run on 10.4. That's just stupid, and unlikely to happen. With Windows' backwards compatability, even old apps will still work in Vista. Before Vista, in the time of XP, nobody wrote apps that will only run on XP. The large majority of apps written for XP would work on Windows 2000 without a problem.

  • 7 Posted by alan_r_cam on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    I remember writing very simple assembly language routines, that took advantage of DOS and BIOS interrupts. I could use them, because they were so well documented... fast forward to Windows. Heard of the WINE for Linux? It took ages (15+ years ?) to translate Windows library calls into Linux equivalents, because the Windows ones are so poorly documented. Sure Vista is backwards compatible- but if you want the new "features" you need to program for them. As Chris is saying- there aren't enough new features to offset the headaches of revising the design. Keeping the old code gives you a wider audience.

  • 8 Posted by magpagbst on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:03PM EDT Report Abuse

    will_luu . . . the article is about writers not bothering to write software for windows vista . . . backwards compatibility with vista is weak at best . . .

  • 9 Posted by agustin2489 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:47PM EDT Report Abuse

    Now that's something I haven't heard of. Makes sense though.

  • 10 Posted by kupriaa1 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:54PM EDT Report Abuse

    You guys should really examine the .Net framework before we get into conversations about compatibility- Also- alan_r_cam- I agree with you that previously many of the Microsoft routines, interfaces, functions and general frameworks have been extremely poorly documented. It has gotten somewhat better I would say over the past ten years. It certainly is not perfect today - but it has gotten better. This conversation can quickly turn into an open source vs closed source discussion that opens up a whole can of worms. But ultimately the .Net framework is better than previous coding initiatives like DNA and its wonderful predecessors.

  • 11 Posted by redsphinx@verizon.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:34PM EDT Report Abuse

    Vista is causing havoc with my on line tournament bridge site. Any ideas on correcting this? Also, is Vista working on upgrades and/or self improvement?

  • 12 Posted by pmhyman on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:14PM EDT Report Abuse

    I develop freeware apps for Windows using C# and .net. I still run XP on my machine, but my applications run just fine on Vista, and I didn't have to do anything special regarding compatibility. Only certain specialized applications (such as security related things) should have trouble running on Vista.

  • 14 Posted by growlnroar on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:13PM EDT Report Abuse

    Re: alexgannis Thanks for being productive in your commentary. Because "anyone with a brain" uses proper English, for one. Two, accepting Vista in spite of its fault is not, by default, progress. I've noticed that Vista-supporters have generally two lines of commentary: (1) Accept the inevitable (which is true, I pretty much had to), and (2) Vista's not that bad. ..Yet. Those who are clinging to XP have a litany of very valid reasons. It's regretable that Microsoft would abandon their customer base just because they can.

  • 15 Posted by shlomoavanade on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:20PM EDT Report Abuse

    Echo kupriaa. Windows development is on the .NET framework which is fairly independent of OS version. Vista has .NET 3.0 pre-installed, while I would guess a good portion of people don't have it installed on their XP machines: It takes about an hour to install. Development on .NET 3.0 is awesome (WPF!), and 3.5 makes some radical improvements, but it's not worth the learning curve if nobody has it.

  • 16 Posted by norreggy on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:41PM EDT Report Abuse

    Vista is simply too annoying and turned my webcam and scanner into bricks I had to downgrade to XP. When my computer finally dies I think I'll just get a Mac or wait for Windows 7 and hope it's better than Vista.

  • 17 Posted by russo74joseph on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:56PM EDT Report Abuse

    When you get to learn to use Vista, you will see how easy the OS sytem realy is to use.

  • 18 Posted by cupdejello23 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:32PM EDT Report Abuse

    Vista does take some getting used to but which operating system doesn't have its woes. once you turn off UAC and make sure you do frequent system backups you can be sure that these systems vista systems. will run fine for a long time. In the case of development issues, security should be a number one priority considering how much fraud and identity theft is going on. The average person does not know how to shield their information on the computer so windows has to do it for them.

  • 19 Posted by coloisla on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:28PM EDT Report Abuse

    I personally know a MS lead programmer that states unresevededly that Vista NEVER should have been released! He works full time as a consultant trying to fix/debug it!!!!

  • 20 Posted by softhackwin on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:31PM EDT Report Abuse

    "Only eight percent of North American software developers are writing for Vista" - these are the facts!

  • 21 Posted by bobbydwest on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:10PM EDT Report Abuse

    Vista to me is just a "prettier" XP. Microsoft tried too hard to copy the look of OSX (which has never, ever crashed on me like Vista has on my BRAND NEW Dell laptop with 4Gb of RAM, etc).

  • 22 Posted by sphezee on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:36PM EDT Report Abuse

    Must say the graphic interface (Vista) is ill though

  • 23 Posted by digeusinc on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:43PM EDT Report Abuse

    Despite all difficulties concerned software development with support of Vista here is a bulk of utilities written by Digeus Inc.- Registry Cleaners, Screen Captures (SnapIt) and Online TV Players. www.digeus.com

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