content: You forget the next generation of programmers is inferior. We're seeing the computer science students who learned Python, Javascript, HTML, and other high level scripting languages take over from the ones who grew up on C, C++, and assembly. And it's not pretty.  Mozilla is going through something similar too. The next generation is taking over and they're just flat out removing features that require more advanced programming and flat out cancelling products like Thunderbird.  Around the mid 00s, universities started to dumb down computer science programs, because they had really high drop out rates before that. Now, they revolve around trendy web technologies and avoid more difficult concepts. I imaging your average computer science student from a state univers  7007  ity would leave struggling to manage memory, let alone handle implementing their own mildly complex data structures like binary search trees.  And of course you have diploma mill H1-B visa workers coming in too. In short, as H1-B low skilled workers and the next generation of computer scientists that come from the university day car generation continue to take over, you're going to see brands that were previously successful and released somewhat decent software (I'm far from a Windows or MS fanboy, I use Linux 90% of the time but I can understand Windows 7 and some earlier versions did some things very well) will slowly start to fade away and get worse.  You see it with iOS too. Android has some big flaws as well, but since they are google and can get the finest talent, they struggle with it the least.