> I think you might be able to go an additional decade backwards

Yeah, Python has had good Windows support at least 15 [0] or 25 years [1], depending on how you count it.

> Back in college most of my friends were on windows and one of them was using python for class projects.

Well it's always been possible to install Ruby on Windows too, it's just that Python supports it so much better.

[0]: https://peps.python.org/pep-0397/

[1]: https://peps.python.org/pep-0277/