> If Microsoft backs off core Windows development, which it certainly seems like they are, this is what we'd expect to see...
If this is really true, I am deeply saddened. I grew up using almost entirely nothing but Windows since 98, and have used every version (except Windows Me) since.
As a desktop and enterprise OS, Windows is pretty fantastic to develop with, natively, contrary to many opinions here. Technologies like COM, .NET (Framework), Win32, Direct{2D, 3D}, and the Windows API are all very powerful and fairly future-proof, too.
Core Windows/NT development is extremely fun, interesting, and the choices that the NT kernel developers made in the 90s put it light years ahead of the competition. Consider its advanced permissions model (ACLs versus UIDs and GIDs), its plug-and-play driver model, and its ability to run on a wide variety of hardware.
Linux supports ACL's, too, but they are not enabled by default. On plug and play, Linux won by a mile by default, as the kernel has much better support than Windows 10 which often has to connect itself to Windows Update.
On COM/.Net, today almost nobody cares. Modern ad-hoc built small-medium Corporateware it's bound to Java as a Hellish curse, and on the rest of the maket here just Direct3D matters; but not as much as before, because for mobile/console gaming Vulkan might work everywhere.
Also, on the enterprise, most people it's migrating to Unix backends and web frontends for lots of tasks. Login once, run everywhere. Does your management software work under a phone, tablet, desktop with an adaptive GUI? Then most of the company doesn't even need a Windows device.
Heck, most non-tech companies have outsourced their IT to 3rd parties and their user accounta are running under Windows virtual machines hosted on Unix servers. And modern BIOSes can run most of their setup under PXE/netboot and connect to these servers to boot their images; so, well, Windows in the desktop is more and more irrelevant.
Lots of LoB applications in various industries are still developed using .NET (even for new developments).
> Also, on the enterprise, most people it's migrating to Unix backends and web frontends for lots of tasks.
Not for every task, web applications are a good choice (which is why lots of new LoB applications in enterprise are still developed as Windows desktop applications).
> Linux supports ACL's, too, but they are not enabled by default.
Oh, it is, just nobody bothers (chances are, `getfacl .` in your homedir will succeed). They are also POSIX ACLs, not NT ACLs, so they have slightly different behavior.
If this is really true, I am deeply saddened. I grew up using almost entirely nothing but Windows since 98, and have used every version (except Windows Me) since.
As a desktop and enterprise OS, Windows is pretty fantastic to develop with, natively, contrary to many opinions here. Technologies like COM, .NET (Framework), Win32, Direct{2D, 3D}, and the Windows API are all very powerful and fairly future-proof, too.
Core Windows/NT development is extremely fun, interesting, and the choices that the NT kernel developers made in the 90s put it light years ahead of the competition. Consider its advanced permissions model (ACLs versus UIDs and GIDs), its plug-and-play driver model, and its ability to run on a wide variety of hardware.