That thing always baffled me, this huge company building a professional IDE couldn't figure out how to ship updates to the C compiler.
> it is hard to say no to you, and I’m sorry to say it. But we have to choose a focus, and our focus is to implement (the standard) and innovate (with extensions like everyone but which we also contribute for potential standardization) in C++.
I mean, yeah if it came from a two member team at a startup, sure focus on C++, understandably. But Microsoft, what happened to "Developers! Developers! Developers!"?
It's not baffling, it's remarkably consistent. They implemented Java as J++ and made their version incompatible in various ways with the standard so it was harder to port your code away from J++ (and later J#). They implemented things in the CSS spec almost exactly opposite the specification to lock people into IE (the dominant browser, if you have to make your site work with 2+ incompatible systems which will you focus on?). Not supporting C effectively with their tools pushed developers towards their C++ implementation, creating more lock-in opportunities.
It was on purpose, Microsoft was done with C, the official message was to move on to C++.
The change of heart was the new management, and the whole Microsoft <3 FOSS.
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Funnily enough, the intellisense parser does support C syntax because it's using a commercial frontend by edison under the hood. MSVC's frontend doesn't.