[Haskell-cafe] Cabal failures...

[Johan Tibell]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Albert Y. C. Lai <trebla at vex.net> wrote:

> On 12-11-20 05:37 PM, Gregory Guthrie wrote:
>
>> No; the first sentence says that someone else had reported that testing
>> on Windows was hard to do because of (a perceived) lack of access to
>> Windows by Haskell developers... The implication is that Haskell developers
>> (only/mainly) use *nix.
>> I commented that if true this lack of Windows testing could limit the
>> availability of Haskell to the largest market share of users.
>>
>
> Clearly, since >90% of computers have Windows, it should be trivial to
> find one to test on, if a programmer wants to. Surely every programmer is
> surrounded by Windows-using family and friends? (Perhaps to the
> programmer's dismay, too, because the perpetual "I've got a virus again,
> can you help?" is so annoying?) We are not talking about BeOS.
>
> Therefore, if programmers do not test on Windows, it is because they do
> not want to.
>

This logic is flawed. More than 90% of computers having Windows doesn't
imply that 90% of all computers in a given household runs Windows. What's
the probability that your household has a Windows computer if you're a
programmer that don't live with your parents? What if that programmer is an
open source contributor. Surely not 90%.
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