Today Microsoft released another free Express version of Visual C++ 2012. In addition to the free Express Visual C++ compiler for building tablet applications, Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop directly supports traditional Windows and command-line applications in C++.

This a great free C++ compiler on Windows for everything from hobby development to using and contributing to open source projects. Besides additional C++11 standards conformance with range-for, override and final on the language side (with more to come in the coming months; watch this space) and a complete C++11 standard library implementation, the free compiler also includes unit testing framework for C++, code analysis for C++ (try /analyze today if you haven't already, as John Carmack says so well), C++ AMP for GPGPU programming, and much more.

See also the longer announcement here.