In my current project I code about 70% C++, 30% C#. If you don’t need fancy stuff, you can stick to whatever .NET version is built into your target Windows (e.

In my current project I code about 70% C++, 30% C#. If you don’t need fancy stuff, you can stick to whatever .NET version is built into your target Windows (e.g. 4.5.1 for Win 8.1, or 4.6 for Win 10), and you should have zero issues with deployment (if that’s why you don’t like VMs). While technically a VM, .NET is very good one, and the quality of its runtime and framework is outstanding. OTOH, I can’t recommend .NET AOT compilation. I used similar MS technology called .NET Native. They have the stuff for a couple of years for Windows 8 Store & UWP platforms. I found and reported multiple bugs with the technology, especially in the area of unmanaged interop. They eventually fix their bugs, but they wasted quite a bit of my time, and I wonder how many more are going to be there. http://stackoverflow.com/q/34187890/126995 http://stackoverflow.com/q/34187890/126995 https://github.com/Const-me/EsentSerialize/commit/ea2cc7be58cdea02cf43d6e344317bbcd1643552 https://github.com/Const-me/EsentSerialize/commit/ea2cc7be58... The third one (only reported via e-mail), .NET Native fails to marshal custom COM interfaces implemented in C# classes to C++ libraries, at least on ARM for Win10 IoT.