Microsoft's free offer or not aside, it just at first appearance to me looks like that the MS studio IDE is much more intimidating and complex compared to the the very simple and easy to use and understand arduino IDE. I came to arduino with a lot of hardware experience but limited software experience. My limited experience was with Borland's original Turbo Pascal IDE. I found the Arduino IDE very easy to figure out from the very start, I think because of the few choices one has to figure out to get a sketch entered and verified and/or uploaded. I suspect I would have passed on the whole arduino platform if I was first presented with the studio IDE to navigate on my own.
So ease of use for raw beginners compared to the arduino IDE? Color me very very skeptical of that claim, unless you have hard data to back that claim, rather then just an opinion?
Simplicity is one of the corner stones that made the Arduino platform the success that it has become. A professional IDE does not seem to me to met that objective.
Lefty