The really great thing about Windows CE was that it was largely "just" Windows. Most of the API bits one would care about were all there. The development tools

The really great thing about Windows CE was that it was largely "just" Windows. Most of the API bits one would care about were all there. The development tools were all the same tools we were already using to write desktop software. And unlike modern mobile OSes that look at you sideways for even running your own code on your own device, there weren't any hoops to jump through to deploy your apps to anyone. It made for a nearly zero learning curve in terms of transitioning from desktop to mobile. I had written several programs in C# that leveraged code I had collected I've years of web and desktop development. Nowadays, the closest thing is web apps. In some ways it's better because the devices are so much more capable than they were back then. In others, it's worse because you're not really writing to one platform, you're writing to at least 6 (Chrome/Firefox/Safari cross Desktop/Mobile).