I was one of the first persons to buy the windows SDK once in the time. Since then I have developed many many windows programs both commercial and free but as the open source era came along Microchip and I went in different directions. They just did not get it anymore.
Yes I have always thought that Visual Studio is the greatest development tool and is still is and have been using it as my main development tool for the VSCP project in all fourteen years of the project. A copy I payed good money for but at the same time gave away the work I created with for free.
With the Visual Studio Community 2013 all that changed and now the open source community have a really good tool to work with. I am very happy to see this continue with Visual Studio Community 2015.
Welcome back close to my heart again Microsoft. You have dearly been missed.