In StackOverflow’s massive developer survey, Windows is still the most popular platform for coders. But the full story is a bit more nuanced.

Ever since open source exploded beyond academia and Windows desktop apps shriveled down to a tiny corner of the native app space, developers have been free to choose the OS they use. For some, that’s macOS, with its premium hardware and UNIX-like internals. For others it’s the endlessly-customizable Linux, which shares the environment we use to deploy most server applications.

Either way, one fact remains — with Microsoft about to release the first new version of its operating system in seven years, they’ll need a strong case to persuade programmers to sign on. And while there’s plenty of talk about developers in Microsoft’s Windows 11 announcement, we need to separate the hype from the reality.

The great rebranding

The most important takeaway for Windows 11 is something you probably already suspect — the most significant Windows 11 changes are also coming to Windows 10.

Here’s a quick run-through that highlights some key pieces of developer technology:

• Windows Terminal is Microsoft’s modern command-line tool. It’s installed by default in Windows 11, but easily installable in Windows 10.
• WebView2 is the Chromium-based, embeddable browser window. You’ll need this to build desktop-skinned web apps with Blazor and to show web content in desktop apps. But it’s already distributed with recent versions of Edge and autoinstalled as a Windows 10 system update.
• Project Reunion is Microsoft’s attempt to break down the walls between different types of Windows desktop apps, including WinUI, WPF, and Win32. It’s still under development, and in Windows 11 it’s been rebranded as the Windows App SDK. But even with the new name, it’s still compatible with Windows 10 all the way back to the October 2018 update.
• New WinUI 3 controls are some of the goodies you’ll be able to use with Project Reunion, and they work everywhere Project Reunion does. However, Windows 11 does have some visual differences, including retooled control styles (more rounded corners, basically), new fonts, and new materials that subtly shift the way that color and transparency work.

UI refinements in Windows 11

• WSLg is a new extension to the Windows Subsystem for Linux that makes it possible to run graphical Linux applications on ordinary Windows computers. It’s not yet available, but should be offered to Windows 10 by the Windows 11 release date.
• winget is Microsoft’s new package manager, which finally lets you launch installs from the command line. It’s included in Windows 11, and easily installable in Windows 10.

If you’re developing on Windows, you shouldn’t be without any of these technologies. But even though Microsoft touts them as reasons to chose Windows 11, they’re available to anyone in the Windows ecosystem. In fact, if you’re part of the developer branch of the Windows Insider Program, you may already have key pieces of Windows 11 on your system.

That doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to stay this way. Somewhere down the road we may see a WSL enhancement or WinUI feature appear that isn’t rolled out to Windows 10. But that day is still a long way off.

The Windows Store still underwhelms

Much noise has been made about the changing Windows Store (now nonsensically called the Microsoft Store, even though it’s there to give you Windows apps, not Microsoft software). But the new store is significantly less exciting than it seems.

The first change — the move to support more types of applications and setup programs—is welcome news. It’s what the Windows Store should have done years ago. But now that the Windows Store has spent so many years being utterly inadequate for the vast majority of Windows users, most people simply ignore it. In other words, we’re deep into too little too late territory.

The move to support Android apps natively sounded much more exciting, until Microsoft disclosed that it was partnering with the Amazon Store instead of the more extensive Google Store that’s feature on every Android phone in existence. The sticking point here was likely Google’s requirements, which might have forced Microsoft to include built-in Google apps, service integrations, and even set Google as a default search engine. But the end result is an initiative that’s already hampered, and probably won’t have the meaningful long-term impact it should.

An Android app in the Windows Store (provided by Amazon)

Finally, Microsoft has announced has attempted to bribe developers into the Windows 11 ecosystem, announcing that apps sold through the Windows Store will be royalty free. Sadly, this shift seems to be mostly about embarrassing Apple in its ongoing attempts to strong-arm lucrative publishers. Not only is the Windows Store too small to really matter, Microsoft has explicitly exempted games from the new no-fee model (presumably because games actually make money).

System requirements: the elephant in the room

Do you remember that time Microsoft forced everyone to get a better GPU so they could upgrade to Windows Vista and see a bunch of ho-hum Aero glass effects? Well it’s 2007 all over again, because Windows 11 comes with some needlessly strict hardware requirements that are sure to hamper its adoption in the enterprise.

The problem revolves around a set of nice-to-have security features (TPM and Secure Boot) that wildly overpromise their ability to stop ransomware attacks. In order to get a computer that supports TPM, you’ll need at least a 7th-generation Intel CPU, and quite possibly an 8th generation one (the exact requirements haven’t been settled yet). This bypasses plenty of capable CPUs that are still out there. Even Microsoft’s current Surface lineup isn’t spared.

This is also a potential problem for developers. Even though we don’t usually skimp on hardware, many programmers save their money for the things that matter most— like SSD storage and oceans of RAM. Even compilation is largely a lookup, I/O-bound operation. (In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of anything I do where the CPU is the bottleneck. But, alas, when I install Windows 11 I’ll be among the crowd of frustrated developers forced to start from scratch on new hardware.)

The bottom line

With today’s cross-platform development tools (like VS Code), and modern trends like virtualization and containerization, picking an OS is often just a matter of personal taste. In fact, for most development projects a team could work effectively across all three of the major OSes.

Windows 11 improves some parts of the developer experience. It’s also a nicer deployment target and a nicer starting point for a new installation. I recently went through the pain of installing a near-original version of Windows 10 and then going through multiple update stages to get WebView2, the Fall Creator Update, the October 2020 Update, and so on. It brought home the fact that Windows 10 was never just one version of an operating system, but a fuzzy label on top of an ever-advancing OS.

And now we’ve got a new label, a fresh starting point, and some nice new conveniences. Aside from the arbitrary system requirements, Windows 11 is a clear choice for anyone who just happens to prefer Windows, whether it’s for the Office experience, gaming, or just plain familiarity. This is no small feat, considering that a decade ago the OS was teetering on the verge of irrelevance for everything outside of the consumer of business worker space. Today’s Windows 11 is more than enough to keep the platform relevant. But will you upgrade?