Python has been fairly well embraced by some parts of Microsoft for quite a while now, and while some of that support has come and gone over the years (eg. IronPython), they still have projects like Python Tools for Visual Studio which are very solid.
I spent a couple of hours with visual studio python tooling a couple of months ago and couldn't face it. Its not the extensions that are bad, it's just I've been using Visual Studio since 6.0 up to 2012 and it's just fucked me in the eye socket constantly since day one. I've only just got rid of the sympathy for the kidnapper of my mind.
Most people who understand Microsoft's history sincerely hope not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Quote: ""Embrace, extend, and extinguish", also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors."
Azure supports (in varying degrees):
.NET, node.js, php, java, python, and ruby.
It also has CLI tools for linux and osx.
If you look into the Azure docs, you will see that many of the services have an XML definition that can certainly be implemented on differing platforms.
VS also appears to get some love including additional JS support, PVTS, etc.
that's basically half of one senior developers salary, and in exchange they get positive press + support for their platform.
b) we've supported Windows for years, money or not. The core team isn't made of Windows experts, so our support may not be always ideal, but we always test on Windows, have Windows CI running, and always release Windows installers. Windows is widely used and we want the experience there to be as solid as possible. The money was a donation, no strings attached (under US law it can't have strings attached, since it's a donation to a 501c3).
http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1n72bm/microsoft_don...
> Basically the PTVS team did a demo of IPython for Microsoft Research big cheeses and asked them to consider donating (used Z3Py theorem prover for the demo). At the end of the hour they were ready to cut the check.
the donation comes w no strings attached & they can spend it any way they want.
UPDATE: I've just noticed a new IronPython release after more than a year! Is that a sign of things to come ?
http://www.hanselminutes.com/384/python-tools-for-visual-stu...
