Do PHP Devs Like Windows?

But I don't think that's really telling us much. PHP quickly became one of the most popular programming languages.
Especially for newcomers. Especially for people with poor programming training.

There are two reasons for this:
  1. Market demand. Everybody wants a website and, since most host run PHP on Apache, well, you do the math.
  2. Huge community. By community, I don't mean just stackoverflow.com, I mean the ton of tutorials and snippets and examples ( that get copy+pasted right into production ) and what have you that is available to each coding monkey.

Sadly, this means that most PHP developers aren't really developers. At least, not right from the start. They're people that like to latch on, going for the easiest and most convenient solution without questioning.

While easy and convenient is generally good, not questioning things means you tend to go with the flow. People who follow the herd find safety in numbers. So, naturally, they choose a Windows box because it's still the most widespread OS, it's user friendly, and there are a lot of people that can help you if you get into trouble.

Plus, most companies I've seen have Windows powered machines in their office. And let's not forget that Macs are pricey and Linux is damn hard.

So yes, most PHP developers do use Windows, but not necessarily by choice.
It's because Windows is the most accessible low hanging fruit.

Still, Windows won by a small margin.