Well, our Windows builds may just have to move from 2005 to 2010 and plan to be stuck there for the forseeable future.
I was hoping I could use a C++11 compiler for Windows development someday. But it's probably more likely that I'll stop developing for Windows before my company's customers stop running XP.
2010 builds them OK. You can also look at mingw with g++ if you want to try some of the C++11 features on Windows XP. I was surprised to hear that MS did this. XP is still widely used in industry and is a good baseline platform to target.
It is not "insane", XP is three years past the end of official support and only two years until the end of extended support. It's two generations old and possibly three by the time this is released.
I know you mean to point out how old and crufty XP is (and that is true), but if you stop and think about it... it's really a testament to C++ and Microsoft engineering that it has done so well for so long.
That said: XP will eventually fade off, but not because of MS official support or extended or whatever. It will fade because end users will eventually stop installing and using it.
Our company only recently started the full roll out of Windows 7, and some computers still require Windows XP (for accounting applications).
These few computers will use Windows XP for the foreseeable future, official support or not.
And they can still use previous versions of VS to develop with XP. It won't stop working, it will gradually fade to governments and big businesses with inertia and businesses who don't want to pay to upgrade.
Then to smaller and smaller niches.
I'm not saying it should die, or it is bad, but that it is old and new tools are not 'insane' to not support it. IE9 came out almost a year ago and doesn't support XP, for example. DirectX vNext in Vista isn't XP compatible.
I'll go out on a limb here and predict that XP extended support will itself be extended. There are simply too many desktops out there using it to be ignored.
Well, our Windows builds may just have to move from 2005 to 2010 and plan to be stuck there for the forseeable future.
I was hoping I could use a C++11 compiler for Windows development someday. But it's probably more likely that I'll stop developing for Windows before my company's customers stop running XP.