My only note on this is small to point out that I believe the 1MB limit was added in 0.3.1 which was released July 2010 so it hasn't been at the 1MB limit for 8 years yet.
You are correct.
The code has had the 1 MB limit since July 2010. However, the actual block size did not exceed 1 MB before that, so it could be argued that the block size has been limited (either by code or by miners) to less than 1 MB since bitcoin was introduced in the beginning of 2009.
In either case, it is misleading to claim that the blocks are still limited to 1 MB (making both of us "wrong") since SegWit allows for more than 1 MB of data to be associated with a block.
As always, generalizations are useful when introducing a concept to someone, but the actual implementation details matter when discussing limitations and real effects.
