[mellery451]

On the other hand, strawberry perl (http://strawberryperl.com/) for windows solved this by simply including a free toolchain (gcc). The gcc compiler for windows is hardly typical, but it was an interesting choice so that they could have more control over the build environment.

That said, I think MS can/should make installing a toolchain easier than they do. It ought to just be another component of the OS that you can choose to have or not have. Supporting different versions of the compiler on one box is a more advanced use-case that advanced developers can deal with - but each rev of the OS should have the "default" toolchain that installs seamlessly.