Who even uses C++ anyway?
The Visual Studio 2005 Express range looks mighty impressive. I might even be tempted to give C# or VB.NET a spin.
The big dissapointment though is that the C++ flavour will not include MFC or ATL.
Great. That’s a real encouragement for C++ hobbyists to start writing for the Windows platform, absolutely no framework support.
It’s sad but true. The VS Express line is a driver for .NET, not Windows.
Hopefully the talk on the WTL mailing list suggesting that they break the dependancy on ATL will get around this problem, but even if that happens, that won’t be for ages.
MS should seriously consider shipping ATL at least.