We don’t always get the technology of choice at work. Some people may prefer a MacBook and iPhone but get a Windows laptop and BlackBerry at work. So it goes for developers, too. They may deploy their PHP apps on a Linux box but primarily they are writing them on a Windows machine. Developer.com finds out why.
The open source PHP dynamic language is one of the most widely deployed languages on Web servers today. But what operating systems are PHP developers using to develop and deploy their applications? It’s a question that has been asked before and now it’s being answered with a new study from Zend, one of the lead commercial backers behind PHP.
The study surveyed 2,000 PHP developers in December and found that 85 percent reported that Linux was their primary operating system as a production environment for PHP.
Windows came in at a distant second at 11 percent while Mac OS X came in third at just 2 percent. However, when Zend drilled down into which platforms respondents prefer for their development, the rankings change dramatically.
According to the study, 42 percent of respondents reported that Windows was their primary operating system for development. Linux came in as No. 2 at 38.5 percent while Mac OS X remained in third place at 19.1 percent.