Windows is a mess and I hope it will stay that way.

The real strength of Windows is backwards compatibility, especially dealing with proprietary software. Its messiness is a relic of the way things were done in the past, it is also the reason why my 20+ year old binary still runs. And it does without containers or full VMs.

I much prefer developing on Linux (I still miss the Visual Studio debugger), but different platform, different philosophy.

Note: I don't know much about mainframes. I heard they really are the champions of backwards compatibility. But I don't think the same principles are applicable to consumer machines.