This is a good move on their part. Something logical, finally. Maybe Microsoft is getting sense? They are making a Windows 10, which is like 7.

What went through Microsoft's head

Poor college student in debt + Expensive software = Nobody wants my software

It's been going through their head for a long time now, that's where express came from. It's just a step up basically giving pro for free.

Just saw this, looks good.

They also support Linux/OSX:

http://news.microsoft.com/2014/11/12/microsoft-takes-net-open-source-and-cross-platform-adds-new-development-capabilities-with-visual-studio-2015-net-2015-and-visual-studio-online/

Will that enable us to create cross platform c# desktop apps from Ubuntu (my preferred os)? What about Unity3D?

Yummy!

I just installed VC2013 the other day... keep me informed!

Good news. The 5 user / $1m thing could be a bit of a pain because lots and lots of companies use the Express versions who will not be eligible for the free version - and $1m revenue is really not "enterprise" but pretty small.... if you have 250 PCs your wage bill alone will be $5-10m!

However I'm looking forward to finally upgrading from 2008 now I can use plugins in free versions. For freelancers this is excellent.

This is probably off-topic, but I'll ask anyway. What would you consider to be the best new features when switching from VS 2010 express to this, for pure C++ development?

This is probably off-topic, but I'll ask anyway. What would you consider to be the best new features when switching from VS 2010 express to this, for pure C++ development?

Plugins, plugins and plugins.

This is probably off-topic, but I'll ask anyway. What would you consider to be the best new features when switching from VS 2010 express to this, for pure C++ development?

C++11 support... 2013 has pretty complete support

I also really like the "quick look" feature to look at a method implementation without having to switch to the CPP file - you see it as a little in-line window.

Good news. The 5 user / $1m thing could be a bit of a pain because lots and lots of companies use the Express versions who will not be eligible for the free version - and $1m revenue is really not "enterprise" but pretty small.... if you have 250 PCs your wage bill alone will be $5-10m!

However I'm looking forward to finally upgrading from 2008 now I can use plugins in free versions. For freelancers this is excellent.

if you're a small business that fits in between this and "enterprise", then sign up for Bizspark and get almost every MS product for free - tonnes of keys of Windows, office, MSVC, databases, free cloud resources, etc...

Does anyone have a reasonable overview regarding the current C++11/C++14 state of that edition? Since MSVC 2013 seems to have received several features in successive updates it's very easy to run into outdated information. I found this post on StackOverflow but it's back from August of last year. Unless significant parts of that changed in the meantime I still would not consider MSVC for my hobbyist for-fun projects because the parts that would be fun are missing.