Number of Desktop vs. Web Developers

[nmadd]

Here's another purely academic, opinion driven and fairly worthless question.

If you were to ask all of the professional software developers in the world: "Are you mainly a desktop developer or a web devloper?" - what would the final ratio be?

In short, how many professional developers focus on the desktop and how many on the web?

(And since I'm sure somebody was thinking of posting, "Well, some do both," note I said mainly above).

[syntaxeater]

Actually, most UI developers do develop both... Besides, rich/thin client UI's are only a small part of most all development. I think you'd be hard pressed to find developers who only make UIs; let alone developers who only develop UIs for 1 platform.

[RobDog888]

Right, its a combination as developers need to know both so when determining what language to use for each project they wont be limited by not knowing one and not the other.

[DirtyHowi]

while in my shop i do desktop UI design, and we have a guy who does ASP UI design, the middle bits were written by both of us and are used pretty much interchangeably, he has web specific stuff and i have win specific stuff (DDLs are not combo boxes and vice versa), but the majority of the code is written in such a way as to not be platform dependent.

[mendhak]

That's hard to figure out. A lot of desktop applications usually are internal to companies, so you can't have any idea how many are out there. Web applications get more exposure, but doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't the 'unknowns' out there either. So... 50-50?

[DavidNels]

Highly web development. My VB skills are dismal at best. :P

[DirtyHowi]

That's hard to figure out. A lot of desktop applications usually are internal to companies, so you can't have any idea how many are out there. Web applications get more exposure, but doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't the 'unknowns' out there either. So... 50-50?

all of our apps are internal, those with an ASP interface simply serve the whole campus, those that are desktop generally have a smaller audience (under 50 people) so while the "incident reporting" system is ASP, the training system is desktop, because everyone can report an "incident" (whether accident or whatever, stubbed toe etc) only 4 people put information into the training system.

[chris128]

I only do desktop development, never touched any ASP stuff etc

[Jenner]

You and me both chris. <Tags> make my eyes go cross at this point. Web development is such a hodge-podge jumbled trashheap of multitudes of loose standards, I'm truly amazed at anyone who can design good looking sites that work with all browsers.

[mendhak]

That's the entire beauty of it! To bring together these disparate technologies created by self-ordained standard bodies consisting of consistently bickering members who cannot agree on anything in a way that gives the user absolutely no idea of the grief behind it all.

[RobDog888]

That's the entire beauty of it! To bring together these disparate technologies created by self-ordained standard bodies consisting of consistently bickering members who cannot agree on anything in a way that gives the user absolutely no idea of the grief behind it all.

Oh so you are talking about web development

Eventually it will all merge into one. Same app can be run locally on the desktop and also in a browser.

[Nightwalker83]

I am studying web development.

[Jenner]

Eventually it will all merge into one. Same app can be run locally on the desktop and also in a browser.

Thus, either browsers will become Remote Desktop clients letting every script-kiddie HaXX0rz into the machine,

or

all desktop applications will start looking and behaving differently depending on your installed software, patches, patches to patches, video hardware, drive space, monitor resolution, printer brand, price of oil and phase of the moon; and require ten times the computing power to run what a Commodore 64 could do flawlessly.

[RobDog888]

Yea, I'm not too happy about it if they do merge them all because then it will be harder to code, things will be more universal which means more arguments perhaps for ex., but deployment will be easier though.

[techgnome]

Thus, either browsers will become Remote Desktop clients letting every script-kiddie HaXX0rz into the machine,

or

all desktop applications will start looking and behaving differently depending on your installed software, patches, patches to patches, video hardware, drive space, monitor resolution, printer brand, price of oil and phase of the moon; and require ten times the computing power to run what a Commodore 64 could do flawlessly.

Oh please, let's not be dramatic about it.... be realistic... the phase of the moon won't affect anything.... it's the tidal forces that will affec things. Nothing will work at high or low tide, but in between, that's when things will work.

-tg

[abhijit]

Eventually it will all merge into one. Same app can be run locally on the desktop and also in a browser.

All our desktop apps are run through Citrix, which makes deployment a breeze.

[Jenner]

Oh please, let's not be dramatic about it.... be realistic... the phase of the moon won't affect anything.... it's the tidal forces that will affec things. Nothing will work at high or low tide, but in between, that's when things will work.

-tg

You're right, I tend to over-react to such things. Last week, our web system went down and I blamed Ganymede crossing Jupiter. Found out later it was just the cosmic-ray activity exceeded 7000 neutron counts / min again...

[nmadd]

You're right, I tend to over-react to such things. Last week, our web system went down and I blamed Ganymede crossing Jupiter. Found out later it was just the cosmic-ray activity exceeded 7000 neutron counts / min again...

Try
 
Catch ex as PhysicalCosmologyException
 
End Try

[dclamp]

a lot of chit chat in a technical thread

i do mostly web development. When i am bored i will do either vb.net or vb5

[penagate]

The vast majority of development isn't either desktop or web development. The interface is only a small part of a well-architected solution; the core logic can be used in any manner.

A slightly better — but still worthless — question to ask would be, "Do you develop mainly stand-alone or server–client applications?" At a guess, I'd say the vast majority of solutions use some form of a server–client architecture.