One small tangent: “Microsoft realized how lucrative platforms are when it made a lot of money selling MS-DOS licenses in the 1980s, and we are all familiar with the history of Windows and Internet Explorer.”

The story of Microsoft’s late 80s and 90s dominance is fading fast.

My kids, now in the early to mid-teens, have grown up with Apple as the dominant phone, tablet and watch platform. All their friends have them. Here in the US (NY metro), Android seems a second rung system. Common but not poplar.

They use Chromebooks and GSuite at school.

Windows is an after thought. Even on the cheap Windows laptops we have for them at home they’re not really “Microsoft” machines. No Office, no heavy O365 anything. They’re terminals for Chrome and web-apps.

The rest of the article is interesting, but user-developed improvements can be found in fun and interesting places.

The same kids play Minecraft and Roblox heavily. My 12yo has made and sold Roblox clothing. It’s not “programming” or self-solving problems, but it’s interesting creation in a similar vein. Minecraft is full of people creating fantastic and interesting mods and improvements to it.