[dataflow]

I think you nailed it. The web & phones took over, and the world underneath changed. Servers and mobile tended to go UNIX-based for obvious reasons, so it's not hard to see why people moved toward developing on UNIX-based platforms. Had those revolutions not happened and if we were still on desktops, we might very well still have been dealing with expensive tooling licenses for Windows (and expensive Windows licenses too).

[jrumbut]

There's clearly a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. I would say that the web revolution gained so much momentum because so many developers could easily get the best tools to learn and experiment with for free with zero barriers.

It's possible to imagine a world where few ever thought to push HTML/CSS/JS to their breaking point to get desktop-like functionality from a website, because developing for the Windows desktop was free and a nice experience.

[dataflow]

> I would say that the web revolution gained so much momentum because so many developers could easily get the best tools to learn and experiment with for free with zero barriers.

IMO (based on my limited view; I haven't studied the history) it happened because the market for smart mobile devices enlarged (one could argue Apple basically created the future & the market with iPhones, which Blackberry didn't manage to), Firebug and then Chrome made it easier to develop for the web, and developers found that these tools let them make cross-platform apps from a single codebase, with a much larger audience to go with it too.

Which is why I didn't see it as being an issue of price-point: I don't recall any better alternatives to it, whatever the price. Even if you were willing to shell out $1000+ for software tools, what alternative tools could you have bought to make it nearly as easy to make apps that ran on practically every major platform out there? Your only practical option for language was JavaScript (or if you were really desperate, Java, or I guess Flash), and Firebug and Chrome had (and many say Chrome still has) the best dev tools for JS. I don't see how being more willing to spend money on dev tools would've changed this on the client side.

On the server side, Windows had more to offer (and perhaps ASP.NET was a decent alternative), and prices probably mattered a ton there. But that's not primarily about dev tools, that's about the Linux being free and Windows Server very much not.

[BBC-vs-neolibs]

Firebug and Chrome were just icing on the cake. The band wagon was well going long before that.

[hyperpallium2]

Yes. Maybe if MS strategically invested in excellent, free tools, Windows Phone would have the best apps, and win most customers. "Developers, developers, developers" was right direction, insufficient magnitude.

Note that Android chose Java, not for its performance on constrained devices, but for... developers.

I really can't see how to tell how plausible this is, that MS Phone could have won, through better long-term strategy, of free dev tools.

[std_badalloc]

As someone who did cross platform development for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone way back when, Windows Phone did actually have the superior dev experience by far (talking about WinPhone 7+ here). It wasn't free, but neither was iPhone development.

They didn't have any market share though, so there wasn't much money to be made making apps for them. I suspect they failed because they launched 2-3 years after Android and iPhone, so the other platforms had accumulated the network effects of an existing user base and app ecosystem that they couldn't catch up to. And they tried hard, IIRC, Microsoft offered to build a Snapchat client for Snap Inc, and to pay them to be allowed to do so, but were denied.

[eecc]

No, MS Phone became irrelevant because there's no space on the market. Indeed there's barely space for more than 1...

Apple managed to claw its position out of pure first-mover-advantage, and it's choice to build on top of a proprietary API. Had they gone with some HTML/js morass, it would have been easily dogged down and ground to dust on the interoperability battlefield.

Microsoft could wrestle Android out of Google's hands though... I mean, why not spinning their own Microsoft-oriented build around AOSP?

[bigbizisverywyz]

>and it's choice to build on top of a proprietary API. Had they gone with some HTML/js morass, >it would have been easily dogged down and ground to dust on the interoperability battlefield.

Actually, initially Apple expected people to deploy apps as webapps and provide links on the homescreen. There was no ios SDK. Only after a lot of loud complaining by devs did Apple release any tools or an SDK for ios native apps.