Ah yes, you sound like delightful people to work with.

Compilers cost real money back then. Word got out that this was how you got a free compiler. You just wrote a linker, and you got in touch with Bill and offered it to him. (You did have to write your linker in a single huge file of assembly, because you didn't have a compiler or a linker yet. It was fine, more programmers knew assembly back then.)

Microsoft has thousands of linkers. They're the linker company now.

Most of their other products started as test cases for their linkers, that they also happen to sell separately as a side business because why not.

Excel is a notable exception, because due to a series of overengineering decisions, it actually is a linker that gradually gained spreadsheet features.

Yes. That's why I was using the IRC bridge.

My hot take is that you should use exactly as many characters as you need to write a meaningful summary, and people who insist on using tiny terminal windows can deal with the consequences of their actions.

"Neurotypical" here, when used as a binary adjective, means something like "close enough to the average on all the relevant spectra to not particularly benefit from special consideration". The exact line for where that is is going to be blurry and situationally dependent, because it's a shorthand for an approximation.

But yes, console and OS exclusives are a plague and people should stop making them.