Visual C++ is the only language supported by Visual Studio that isn't proprietary. As such, it's the only supplied language any career programmer should consider. For obvious reasons, Microsoft won't support competitive operating systems; so if they screw up, and your careeer depends on their languages, you're stuffed. So I won't waste time on the other languages.

The compiler seems excellent; I've not caught it out. Thank God it now supports advanced programming techniques, such as Alexandrescu's loki, introduced in his excellent book modern C++ design (if you're a C++ programmer, and you don't have this book, you're nuts). I haven't tested it, but I don't doubt it; support was one of the specific design goals of this compiler. It also supports boost, written by refugees of the C++ standards committee.

Unfortunately, the GUI is dismal. It's a repeat of the needlessly complex VC 2002 mess. If this GUI was a person I'd suspect (s)he was selling drugs; it's full of irritating touches to prevent you staying aware of the overall picture. It is not designed for C++; features are shoehorned in uncomfortably; the GUI tries to be clever but ends up constantly getting in the way like a hungry cat about to be fed; it simply does not work. I think the problem is that it assumes your work is simple, and fits its simple patterns.

For example, the resource editor is badly shoehorned in. Everything has to be in panes. Now, I've never met a developer with a monitor the size of a wall. No combination of panes will show all the relevant information about a dialog at any time. Consider: if you've got some long text, no matter how long it is, it has to be edited by default in a box slightly bigger than the word "false". This is poor design.

The panes only show bits of information. The don't go away when they're irrelevant. They're too small when they're relevant. Everytime you want to something, you first spend what feels like ten minutes resizing and manouvering the panes to get to it. If panes cannot show information properly, why bother cluttering the screen with them? Let me get information up when I want it, and don't waste the screen otherwise. A pane hangs around like a fart in a lift.

This GUI was most certainly not designed by someone who writes C++. Personally, I think it was designed by a committee of well dressed trainspotters. It reeks of fashion. The silly sods should have used the Windows desktop interface design; in may not be fully appropriate for C++ development, but at least it works.

I've tried to use this GUI, God have I tried to use it. It just does not work. You know how awkward and clunky the command line is to use? It has no features, no wizards, no fancy shortcuts and stuff. Despite this, it's more productive than this GUI. I know the BSD command line development environment. That works. I've ended up downloading Cygwin. What a mess.

I think Microsoft have realised the GUI is poor; they're giving away the command line version of the compiler. They must be seriously worried about market share to make such a radical move. I don't care; go get the compiler. I'd strongly advise people to take advantage of this opportunity, though. Any serious Windows programmer should get the Platform SDK too, and to consider the .NET framework SDK.