Do you remember that "developers developers developers .." bit. Can you recall any other executive of a multi-billion corp who was that passionate about developers? I appreciated a executive who was that passionate about third party developers. Also, he was part of a founding team that built a software giant ! I am a *NIX/Java guy but I appreciate Microsoft SDKs and Tool sets. Ballmer has not been as successful as hoped , but he is ok in my book.
Ballmer was at Microsoft when they were sub 50 people. Maybe he's not a visionary founder but potentially a visionary foundational employee? Considering how long he's been at the company, I'm not sure how one separates Microsoft's high in the 90s from Ballmer.