Healthy attitude you have there
Yep, I have been very positive up until comments such as yours which was negative and misleading.
Yes, you are constantly pushing this 'free' offer, but not explaining that it isn't a free lunch
If you had bothered to click the link you would see a page with this title. It couldn't more clear!!!
Further more the url of the page also says it is a 3 years offer and this would be clearly visible when anyone hovers their mouse over the link .Here is the page url so that you can see my point Visual Studio for free for Arduino Development
I always have linked any mention of a free Microsoft offer to the same page with the same title. I went to the effort to create the page so that things are clear, however if you click onto the Microsoft WebSiteSpark page to read more everything is once again stated very clearly. There isn't even any "fine" print, all the print is clear as day. So from my point of view you were extremely negative for no good reason!
So my positive and informative post deserved more than false accusations of attempting to pretend something isn't free forever. I feel that if you haven't got anything good to say then you should not spoil it for others. I don't post very often, unlike some we might know, so again, to say that "I am constantly pushing" is clearly unfair. I'm not even selling anything for you or anyone else to take grievance against.
If you like I can post the messages I receive EVERY day from very happy users who are grateful for this information. It is clear from their messages that these users are both relieved and happy that they finally have an IDE that works with them instead of against them.
Features such as intellisense make a huge difference to speed of development. In the following example we see what we are prompted with the relevant Arduino syntax when we type "Ser" in Visual Studio
In this example prompted with the options for the "Serial" object
In this example we can easily see two errors in the code.
In this example we see that the Arduino files in our project can be expanded to show methods and more. If we double click we go to the code. We can also press F12 or right click any Arduino code in Visual Studio to "Go To Definition". We can also "Find all references" to ANY Arduino code.
I have said that there are many people who enjoy this solution who do not need the 3 year offer. The 3 year offer is often for newbies who also appreciate the easier to use tools (Their words not mine so please allow them their views).
The first 3 years of Arduino development is obviously learning intensive so why would anyone want to take this away by being negative. 3 Years is a long time, other solutions will be available by then. For example, Atmel Studio is created by the manufacturer of the Arduino AVR chips, we will have a Atmel Studio plugin within 3 years.
I know that the Arduino dev team are also working on a new IDE which I hope will provide many of the features I have described. So there will be no loss of enjoyment and no reason not to benefit right now.