I think the other piece going into it is that hardware keeps getting faster. I would imagine especially so the hardware of the average Windows developer. If something doesn't generally appear to be slow to those building it, they're unlikely to spend a lot of time optimizing.
I'm a fan of including benchmarks in CI pipelines. The Windows developers should have a historical record [1] of the performance degradation and be forced to look at it daily.
To be fair, that machine is pretty high-spec for NT 3.51, given that the minimum requirements are 12 MB RAM and a 386 (which tops out at 40 MHz). It'd certainly be nice to see that kind of performance in newer Windows versions, though.
> I think the other piece going into it is that hardware keeps getting faster.
It's also that you're expected to update windows whether or not they've actually improved performance. Why would microsoft prioritize that when the bulk of their sales are driven by other concerns, like enterprise sales and what some might call basic functionality (e.g. Windows Defender, when it was first released).
Hell, now they're moving to a service model and there's even less reason to court consumers directly.
