Well, as I first found out from Ed Burnette and as I see now at the Microsoft site, Visual C++ Express is now free forever just like the CDT. I doubt anything I’ve said had anything do to with their change in strategy. I had a feeling, when I first saw the one year free deal, that they were just testing the waters and would eventually remove the restriction. I just didn’t think it would happen so soon.

So does that make me give up on my wish to better support Windows development with the CDT. No way! There’s more to it than just C/C++ development. I think Eclipse has so much to offer Windows developers that the Express Editions of VisualStudio just don’t offer. As one great example, I can’t wait to exploit more of TPTP static analysis and expanding it’s integration with CDT’s DOM. I think there is so much we can do there to make C++ programming more reliable and is something that VisualStudio doesn’t offer in any form.

So I think this announcement just makes me want to improve Windows support even more that I’m going on a personal mission to make sure it happens. As always, anyone keen on helping me with this mission, please let me know. I have a ton of work to do with my regular QNX and CDT work so I’d appreciate any help I can get. But I think this is one area that can go a long way to bring the CDT and Eclipse to our much sought after Uberness.