I don't know about the rest of the (initial) team, but Joel was lead on Excel as I recall. If you have a group if devs that know the nt kernel, SQL server and iis very well - why would you not use the ms stack?

Don't get me wrong, I prefer Linux and Free software myself - but that doesn't mean the thousands of Man years sybase and ms have spent on their stack is wasted effort.

Because they thought it was the better choice for them. You cannot argue with the result.

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-StackExchange-StackOverflow-u...