Thanks for the perspective: I haven't heard VS given as a reason before. It's probably a consequence of the bubbles I've been in, but for every dev I've ever met (incl everyone in my CS program), there wasn't any advantage to Windows for development and disadvantages everywhere you looked. This may be a consequence of the devs I know (esp the good ones) skewing towards having a CS background (though obviously most of them aren't computer scientists in industry).

(Of course none of this applies to personal computing, where I still don't understand Windows usage beyond the need for niche software).