I spent my first 12 years as a developer doing Windows development,cut my teeth on MFC,ATL, COM/DCOM, VB6 and later on Windows Forms with .Net.
But by mid 2008 the writing was on the wall and I had spent so much time at one company, I found that my skillset wasn't marketable. No one wanted "Windows desktop developers". They wanted web developers. I've spent last 10 years being a boring old corporate Enterprise Developer nowhere near Silicon Valley.
On my list of things that I'm focusing on these days - learning at least one modern front end web framework, learning Node JS (I'm mostly a C# developer now), become more proficient with AWS from the netops/developer/devops perspective (I'm slightly above average now), Docker, etc., Windows desktop development ranks right below learning COBOL.
Looking at the market for front end technology, why would any developer who wants to stay competitive choose to focus on Windows development over Web and mobile.
Windows development pays the bills, owns the tablets, laptops and desktop space outside US, and if that means being paid like COBOL consultants, even better.
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/
Windows software development jobs have been in decline for years...
https://www.itwriting.com/blog/9121-stackoverflow-developer-...
I guess with 2 021 worldwide currently open positions on LinkedIn, there is something for many of us to be busy for many years.
Classic music also has been on the decline for centuries, yet composers still sell albums.
Working on technologies that are declining is not where most developers want to be....
Windows owns the desktop, laptops and tablets here in Europe.
Is it declining? Sure it is, consumers are no longer replacing their computers every two years, likewise with mobile phones and tablets.
Here the market speaks pre-paid, most consumers only replace their devices when they can no longer use them.
Devices around 100 euros are still being sold with Android 5.1 on them, maybe I should say Android is also declining, as it isn't profitable to spend development effort in new versions, given the adoption rate.
Android tablets are being replaced by Windows tablets across all major consumer chainstores.
All flagship Asus and Samsung tablets are Windows 10 now, that sounds pretty much desktop Windows to me.
I have seen countless technologies come and go.
Some want to be rich selling hit-Summer tunes, while others manage a comfortable life composing classic, jazz, medieval music.
The numbers I'm "throwing around" are from reputable publicly accessible sites - unless you don't think Stack Overflow is reputable. As far as the trend being away from Windows development - I posted a quote from the CEO of Microsoft in this very thread saying as much.
I don't "hate" Windows development. I would hate being stuck on unpopular, less marketable technologies. My area of expertise is still Windows back end development and ASP.Net MVC and .Net Core with a side of AWS netops, devops, and development.
Visual Studio Team Services is a joy to use for CI/CD.
I'm not disputing that Windows "owns the desktop" but the desktop market for developers is minuscule compared to web and mobile. All the money is going away from the desktop. How much money does the average consumer spend on desktop applications outside of Microsoft and Adobe? How much of B2B software as a service revenue is being spent on desktop applications compared to web applications and mobile? What are most people doing on their tablets if not MS Office and spending time on the web? Even if you're a developer, there is little money to be made creating development tools. My entire development tool chain consists of Fred Software besides the $11 a month a pay JetBrains.
Is it declining? Sure it is, consumers are no longer replacing their computers every two years, likewise with mobile phones and tablets.
We were talking about Software sells not hardware sells why are you conflating the two? As a developers selling software, The important metric is the installed based not the replacement rate. And you keep talking about the popularity of Windows desktops, but that doesn't matter as a software developer if no one is buying desktop software - except for MS Office. People are still mostly using thier desktop computers for office productivity and to go to websites.
I have seen countless technologies come and go
So have I, I got my start programming in 65C02 assembly language on an Apple //e. But I've never been one to mourn a technology that was passed its prime. That's the reason I've been moving away from the Microsoft stack toward cloud, web, and eventually mobile.
As far as where the money is for development....
Everyone including Microsoft sees the writing on the wall.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/selling-software-where-have-al...
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/22/mobile-game-revenue-to-pass-...
There are many, many ecosystems where a Windows desktop app is the ideal platform. I spend my days writing libraries for Windows desktop software and sharing them with many other companies in the same space.
Almost by definition, most of the companies in any particular set of domains will not be household names you've heard of. There are really very few consumer software businesses, but somehow these unknown companies manage to be pretty damn profitable, even if they're not on the scope of Microsoft or Adobe.