[pjmlp]

That reason doesn't make any sense to me.

I have been coding since the mid-80's, not having the same local UNIX machine for doing development than what the server was running was quite common in the world of commercial UNIXes.

Then I moved into managed languages, where the actual CPU and even underlying OS, only matter to low level coding, again not using the same local OS/CPU combo as the server.

Finally, cross compilation for ARM exists since years.

ARM hasn't taken off, because most of time it doesn't matter enough to displace the existing stacks.

[cogman10]

> I have been coding since the mid-80's, not having the same local UNIX machine for doing development than what the server was running was quite common in the world of commercial UNIXes.

Things change. Why is x86 the primary server platform? It isn't a great micro architecture. The fact that ARM and others (Like power pc) have been eating their lunch in terms of price, performance, and power consumption is proof enough of that.

So how do you explain the rise of x86 and the fall of pretty much every other platform on servers?

To me, it's simple. x86 got fast enough on consumer hardware to be able to run the same software that would run on servers. Developers like to test their software locally. Emulators for anything to x86 have been terribly slow.

That's why since about the late 90's pretty much everyone has been running x86 servers.

That you can cross compile isn't really the issue. Even running managed languages isn't the issue. The issue is that there are always differences that are hard to compare when switching platforms if the one you are developing on isn't the same as the one you are targeting.

That's like 90% the reason why most consoles have switched over to x86.

Mobile devices would have gone to x86 were it not for the fact that licensing costs were too high and the performance/watt ratio too low.

[ogre_codes]

I know your question is rhetorical, but worth addressing because it's relevant.

> Why is x86 the primary server platform?

Cheap PC prices plus Linux meant you could deploy Linux for a fraction of what deploying any other Unix (save the *BSD family which shares similar advantages).

Cheap ARM CPUs and reasonably priced, performant ARM development machines pretty much harpoons that big advantage x86 had.

> The issue is that there are always differences that are hard to compare when switching platforms if the one you are developing on isn't the same as the one you are targeting.

Yes and no. We've been developing on MacOS and deploying to Linux for some time. The issues we end up fighting are minimal and we're going from one OS to another. I suspect most of the ARM-x86 issues that haven't already cropped up and been dealt with will be soon.

[klelatti]

Agreed that lack of desktop Arm wasn't the biggest issue. Arm didn't take off because:

- Intel had process leadership and x86 was 'good enough' - Process leadership was in turn supported by the volumes / margins that Intel had on their consumer PC business.

But now Intel has lost process leadership partly due to smartphone volumes supporting huge investment at TSMC / Samsung and the hyperscalers have an incentive to differentiate their offerings (e.g. Amazon Graviton).