But they don't capture them to develop against their frameworks. I liked WPF, but their APIs were clearly influenced by business decisions like forcing software into their store, especially in UWP.

I am not yet if they are a reliable partner to invest time in. Apple uses such a model, but then why would I use Windows if it just morphs into a worse clone of it? I dislike that model and believe it is extremely bad for digital/technical education.

Those that use open systems with software freedom will shield others from the worst exploits MS or Apple might come up with in the future.

VSCode is indeed nice. Github is ok.

When the GitHub purchase was happening, there was a lot of noise from both parties about how the companies would remain separate and GitHub would keep the things which make it appealing to developers; it therefore seems disingenuous to me to consider any of the positives of GitHub to be attributable to MS.