For those just reading the headline and not the article, it is important to note that Visual Studio 2010 Express will continue to be available for free. (But it won't take advantage of changes to the compiler or the environment.)
Only a fool would base their development environment on the hope that an outdated compiler version will still be downloadable from Microsoft's website into the future.
That thing is crippleware anyway, it can't even produce native 64-bit executables. Raise your hand if you're still on a 32-bit operating system.
Well over half of the Windows install base is 32-bit. And 32-bit apps work just fine on 64-bit Windows (excluding system level utilities/drivers, of course).
I assume this matters in case you might later need to reinstall?
Just make a local copy of the installer after you download it then. Even if you forget to do this, prominent files like this don't disappear from the Internet; at worst you could torrent it. (And that should be legal since I don't think the software expires.)
