Comment by jezek2

Interestingly I've never used Visual Studio on Windows (only for a brief time for ARM based PDAs where I could experience the infamous MFC which was okay to me despite the hate).

I've used Borland C++ and Watcom C/C++ back in the day and MinGW after that. Also COM was invented for interoperation between languages/compilers.

Being a good citizen means to not use the inherently unstable C++ ABI directly. You can use C API or even COM for that. Relying on it is cute but it's accidental and it will break in the future. Microsoft can't guarantee that it will stay stable because C++ is always evolving, forcing to break the compatibility.

Open source projects shouldn't depend on proprietary compilers (they can support them, but not as the only option). It just undermines the purpose of it.

The reasons I use MinGW is because it produces better compatible binaries on Windows, allowing me to support all Windows versions from Windows 2000 to latest with a single binary (and sometimes 64bit if there is a need/advantage) and it doesn't require me to bundle dozens of DLLs (or worse, installing them system-wide) and artifically limit the compatibility for no reason.

Breaking the compatibility is hostile to the users who can't or want to always use the latest Windows.