Azure didn't exist. OS X had just come out and almost no one took Macs seriously as a development target yet. Windows was the only user-facing thing anyone developed for aside from little Java games on flip phones. The Web 2.0 takeover was still years off and Internet Explorer ran the show.

Is "historical context" not as clear as I thought? You're the second person to challenge this by pointing out the current situation when I'm talking about how we got here.