For most people the opposite was true. They couldn't write a large fast program on a PC because they couldn't afford to buy one.

The "genius" of IBM was to reinvent an updated version of S-100, stick an IBM badge and a "business" price tag on a backward and underspecified machine, and spend millions on marketing.

16-bit hardware and operating systems were already available in the S-100 space.

Between them IBM and MS traded performance for forced standardisation. This likely held back access to much better features - like higher reliability and multitasking - for a decade or so.