Downloading 10 gigabytes of SDK just to run the compiler is not fun. This is not very accurate. Just the compiler/linker (which doesn't need the SDK to build a

Downloading 10 gigabytes of SDK just to run the compiler is not fun. This is not very accurate. Just the compiler/linker (which doesn't need the SDK to build and run programs, i.e. equivalent of getting just gcc) is about 300mb to download. Then, assuming you're talking about the Windows SDK, which as far as I'm aware you only need when targetting OS-specifics is abut 700mb.