The best part is that this one SKU supports C++, C#, and Visual Basic together. Today Visual Studio has made Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop available and you can go download it now free. Even better that the the Express Desktop SKU gets the new 2012 features as well. Open Source projects need free tools like the Express SKUs. I'm glad folks realized that no-cost desktop software development is important.

This will bring to the Visual Studio Express family significant new capabilities that we’ve made available in Visual Studio 2012 for building great desktop applications. Today, I’m happy to announce that we will add Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop to the Visual Studio 2012 family. we heard from our community that developers want to have for Windows desktop development the same great experience and access to the latest Visual Studio 2012 features at the Express level. Shortly thereafter (with a lot of people pushing) Soma announced there would be a 'Windows Desktop' Express version for free. I wasn't the only one who thought this was a problem.

However, I was very surprised (and disappointed) that there was no free way to make Console Apps, or Windows Forms apps, or anything for the Windows Desktop. When the Visual Studio 2012 free versions were originally announced the first thing I noticed was that they had switched from a language-specific model (C# Express, VB Express, etc) to a target-specific model (Windows 8, Web).

Microsoft free visual studio