Sung to the tune of "Yellow Brick Road."

Hmm: No-cost desktop software development is dead on Windows 8

Well, .Net development that is.

Microsoft wants Windows developers to write Windows 8-specific, Metro-style, touch-friendly applications, and to make sure that they crank these apps out, the company has decided that Visual Studio 11 Express, the free-to-use version of its integrated development environment, can produce nothing else.
... the Windows SDK for windows 8 will not include a compiler toolchain at all, lest any sneaky developers try to cheat the system and use it to write desktop apps.