Visual Studio 2012

www.microsoft.com/visualstudio

If you intend to do any kind of Windows software development then Visual Studio is pretty much your only option. But just because it is hopelessly proprietary does not mean it’s bad, in fact Visual Studio is the single best IDE I have ever used for anything, and at this point I’ve used just about every popular IDE ever made.

Microsoft Visual Studio is so fluid, so intuitive, and so advanced that it simply sets the bar that all other IDEs have been have been hopelessly trying to reach. Once you get the rhythm, VS development is a real pleasure that nothing else can match.