I always wanted to write some programs using C++. There were some obstacles. Visual C++ is not free. I probably can say it is not a problem for me now. I am using MingW gcc / wxWidgets / Bloodshed Dev Cpp. It works for me quite well.
Writing C++ program is still very painful compare to some many other alternatives today. I am very used to perl scripts and even autohokey scripts works very well. Autohotkey scripts can even be compiled into exe, even though I am suspecting it is not really compiling scripts into exe, rather it is packaging the autohotkey interpreter into the binary.
I am thinking of writing a universal wrapper for portable apps. The process of creating portableapps is still cumblesome.