I actually went on a long angry rant on Facebook about this, to the displeasure of my friends who work at MS ;) Lots of the dev process are substantially broke

I actually went on a long angry rant on Facebook about this, to the displeasure of my friends who work at MS ;) Lots of the dev process are substantially broken, even before you get to code samples and documentation. For example, after I install Win8 on my machine I wanted to get started and just play with the SDK. Write a Hello World or something. I Googled how to do this, which led to a Microsoft page with a download link. That link told me to go download it from the Windows Store (why couldn't you just tell me the first time?!). Okay so, downloaded Visual Studio. Start it up. Nope, you can't do anything until you register as a developer (not even Apple requires this!). Okay so, click on link to register, pops open a browser window to log into my MS Account, after which is redirects to another site with the reg form, which insists on having my mailing address, company profile, and phone number (all of these fields are mandatory, as if lone developers just checking out your SDK don't exist). After giving MS all the fake info it demanded I was sent an activation code to paste into Visual Studio. Seriously. Neither iOS nor Android are this draconian about accessing their SDK. Shit, I can build entire apps in Xcode before signing up as a dev, and Android is even more free with access.