Yes, Microsoft did have an incredible edge in deign tools back them. (Arguably they’re in a good position today, too, because even as Visual Studio looks a bit bloated, VS Code is often ranked as the most popular code editor.) Of course, Microsoft also abandoned plenty of promising tools back then, particularly the Expression family.

Microsoft also had an instinct to attempt to be all things to all people (often following the hot thing of the time, whether it was Flash or phone OS, or Ruby on Rails). I feel your pain with .NET, though the picture has improved quite a bit now that .NET Core has replaced the .NET Framework in .NET 5, meaning there are no longer two separate streams of development vying for attention.

That said, what’s a developer to program in today? The JavaScript ecosystem is certainly no better. The number of packages in an average project is dizzying — I get nervous just running npm update.

(Oh, and I suspect very strongly many of those lines of yours are far from being retired.)