Feels like I’m the only one here not already a greybeard, so just gonna share in case it resonates with anyone not already building awesome things: I’m working on learning how to program with C++. New at this, loving it, hoping to make a career change into IT in the coming year.

That’s only because they had no practical way of doing that since no computer was expected to be online 24/7.

Had they had the opportunity, they would 100% have taken it. Windows was never about serving a good experience to customers, it was always about serving the Microsoft-owned experience to customers—and these two things are very much mutually exclusive.

I don’t think they would have done it any other way, it always had to be a slow ratcheting of control over the user. If the user hostile experience that exists today was the default back then, everyone would have moved to something else while they still could.