> I think you're thinking of consumer devices, not industrial.

Maybe he's thinking of more modern devices. There was a time when Microsoft flogged WinCE as an embedded solution, and yes a lot of people producing embedded stuff drank the kool aid.

I watched one instance of this happen first hand. They asked me what OS should they base their shiny new product (that I would be the first customer of), I said I would use some 'nix, but they should chose what they were comfortable with.

It turned out to be bad advice. They were comfortable with Windows desktop of course, so they chose WinCE. WinCE is not the stable WinNT they were familiar with, despite what Microsoft's marketing said. I've used a number of WinCE based devices in the past, they were all about as reliable as Windows 95/ME, which is to say most wouldn't last the day without rebooting.

In the end they could only get it working by shipping the product to a team in Germany that had access to the WinCE source. It cost them a small fortune, and lost them over a year. The delay lost me as a customer.

Most (I hope all, but it's never all) of todays experienced software engineers wouldn't make that mistake, but these people where (pretty good) hardware engineers, with a vision for a product they built the hardware for. Developing software was something you hired people to so for you, like plumbing and legal work. And they wanted those people to provide them with a familiar environment.

WinCE has long since been retired, or course. May it soul burn in hell. Yes, those same hardware engineers who insist on sticking to what they are familiar with might turn to Windows 11 instead. But that comes with costs - no ARM or other CPU's, huge resource requirements, insistence on TPM's, so little lack of control of the platform that you lose control of the USS Yorktown [0]. Those costs are large. In fact so large they would have overwhelmed the budget of my engineering friends years ago, and they would have just gone with Linux. I haven't seen a new embedded Windows design in quite a while, so I suspect that's true for most embedded projects now.

[0] https://archive.is/aKrml

Sorry, it is my mistake. I was more so talking about software for working on industrial embedded devices (machinery, robots, or similar), which often use bespoke software for editing ladder logic or similar things for devices like PLCs.

I've never encountered a robot that didn't require windows to program. I know they're out there, but they don't seem common in my experience. Building them yourself is possible, but you regularly encounter cases where common, well-supported components require Windows to program. It's a drag.

I'd love to see it — Windows is far from my preferred OS. But my original point was essentially that there are tons of reasons like this which makes Windows a very productive and useful platform for many developers. I totally agree that there are cases where Linux or macOS are better (I prefer them both when possible) and yeah, WinCE was a total mess even by consumer standards. I had a pocket pc (ha, I was so excited about it) and it was a tremendous letdown largely because of the OS.

Side note, thanks for reminding me of that era. As bad as the software was, those devices were so god damn exciting. A pocket computer! I still remember how incredibly futuristic it felt.