I wanted to develop for Windows Phone, I really did. I even bought two phones, hoping that my experience with the first one would be fixed with the second.

But I just couldn't: getting the environment to work required me to upgrade my version of Visual Studio, upgrade my version of the OS, pay a developer fee (or send an e-mail with a scan of my ID and grade transcript to get it waived as a student). And even after sorting all those obstacles, the IDE was so buggy that I couldn't even place a date picker object.

The impression I got was: you can develop for WP, as long as you do it the way we like it (OS version, Visual Studio version) and invest about a hundred dollars getting up to spec.

Compared to Android's "here's the free IDE for your OS of choice", I'm not surprised developers weren't thrilled.