Microsoft’s success was as much to do with them being a programming languages company first. DOS, Windows 3.1, and even Windows 95 shipped with an interpreter and compiler for their BASIC and C, respectively. This empowered developers to use and write code for the OS out-of-the-box.
But neither Windows nor DOS shipped with a C compiler; it's not a Unix. DOS shipped with an IDE for BASIC, and compilers were available but not free. The more accessible option was Turbo Pascal (and then Delphi 1), Visual Basic was also popular but more costly.
GCC appeared in 1987 but only worked acceptably under Unix-like OSes.
Also qbasic was not the same as quickbasic, and it had a limit on the LOC and other limitations.
I do not know about earlier versions of Windows.
It was more of a toy.